Kemal Atatürk
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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| Periods in Office: | October 29, 1923 to November 10, 1938 |
| Pres. Predecessors: | none |
| Pres. Successors: | İsmet İnönü Celal Bayar |
| PM Predecessors: | |
| PM Successors: | Fevzi Çakmak Rauf Orbay |
| Birth: | 1881 |
| Place of Birth: | Thessaloníki (Selânik) |
| Death: | November 10, 1938 |
| Place of Death: | Istanbul |
| Political Party: | As PM: CHP |
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–10 November 1938), until 1934 Mustafa Kemal, Turkish army officer, statesman and revolutionary, was the founder and first President of the Republic of Turkey.
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Early career
Atatürk was born in the city of Thessaloníki (Turkish: Selânik) in Macedonia (Northern Greece; part of Ottoman Empire of that day), where his birthplace is commemorated by a museum at the present day Turkish Consulate. In accordance with the then prevalent Turkish custom, he was given the single name Mustafa. His father, Ali Rıza (Efendi), was a customs officer who died when Mustafa was a child. His mother's name was Zübeyde (Hanım).
Mustafa studied at the military secondary school in Selânik, where the additional name Kemal ("perfection") was bestowed on him by his mathematics teacher in recognition of his academic brilliance. Mustafa Kemal entered the military academy at Manastır (now Bitola) in 1895. He graduated as a lieutenant in 1905 and was posted to Damascus. He soon joined a secret society of reform-minded officers called Vatan (Motherland), and became an active opponent of the Ottoman regime. In 1907 he was posted to Selânik and joined the Committee of Union and Progress commonly known as the Young Turks.
The Young Turks seized power from the Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1908, and Mustafa Kemal became a senior military figure. In 1911, he went to the province of Libya to take part in the defence against the Italian invasion. During the first part of the Balkan Wars Mustafa Kemal was stranded in Libya and unable to take part, but in July 1913 he returned to Istanbul and was appointed commander of the Ottoman defences of the Gallipoli area on the coast of Thrace. In 1914 he was appointed military attache in Sofia, partly to remove him from the capital and its political intrigues.
Commander in chief
When the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of Germany, Mustafa Kemal was posted to Rodosto (now Tekirdag) on the Sea of Marmara.
Gallipoli
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He was later promoted to the rank of colonel and assigned the command of a division in the Gallipoli area. He played a critical role in the battle against the allied British, French and ANZAC forces during the Battle of Gallipoli in April 1915, where he held off allied forces at Chunuk Bair and on the Anafarta hills. For this success, he was later promoted to the rank of Brigadier General, thus aquiring the title of pasha. He gained increasingly greater degrees of influence on the war effort.
Kemal gained much respect from his former enemies for his chivalry in victory, and the Kemal Atatürk Memorial has an honoured place on ANZAC Parade in Canberra. It includes his words:
- "Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours... You the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears. Your sons are now living in our lands and are in peace. Having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."
Final WWI years
During 1917 and 1918 Mustafa Kemal was sent to the Caucasus front to fight against Russian forces, in which he had some success. He was later assigned to the Hejaz, to suppress the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule. After resigning his commission, he eventually returned to serve in the unsuccessful defense of Palestine. In October 1918 the Ottomans capitulated to the Allies, and Mustafa Kemal became one of the leaders of the party in favour of defending the area roughly occupied by present day Turkey, while agreeing to withdraw from all the non-Turkish territories.
Turkish Emancipation
Mustafa Kemal became in 1919 the leader of the Turkish emancipation. With a small and ill-equipped army, he repelled both the invading forces and the Sultan's troops and local rebels, eventually gaining control of the Turkish homeland. By September 1922, he had triumphed against both external enemies and internal opposition. Already a military hero, he proclaimed as the struggle ended that the military triumph must be followed by "victories in such fields as culture, scholarship, science, and economics."
In the Turkish Independence War(Kurtuluş Savaşı), Atatürk declared war on the allies and the Ottoman Regime. First, he rallied Turkish troops to Eastern Anatolia where Armenians had occupied before. The Armenians had Russian help until the declariation of USSR. Kazım Karabekir defeated the Armenians and eventually a peace treaty signed with newly-founded Armenian Republic. After the defeat of the Armenians, the Soviets signed a mutual-support pact with Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi Hükümeti(the parliament Atatürk had founded). As soon as the treaty signed was with Soviets, the Greeks assaulted Anatolia. Greeks moved without any Turkish resistance until İnönü, a village near Eskişehir. The First İnönü Battle lasted for days and Greeks retreated. Allies were unhappy with Greeks and forced them to prepare an assault again. This battle is interesting as each Turkish soldier had been given only 5 bullets due to poverty. During the Turkish Independence War, women supported the army by gathering bullets and food for men. After the victory over Greeks, Atatürk started liberating Turkish settlements one by one until Greeks came back with twice bigger army than Turks and captured Eskişehir. After than, İsmet İnönü(Officer of Atatürk) defeated Greeks in the Second İnönü Battle. In August,30, Atatürk started Büyük Taaruz(Mass Assault) and defeated Greeks in Sakarya Battle. The Turks chased Greeks to the Aegean Sea and the Greeks left Anatolia for all and Greek Monarchy collapsed. The French in Southern Anatolia were already defeated without any army and had made peace after the Second İnönü Battle. When the Greeks left Anatolia, Atatürk knew that it was time to liberate İstanbul and Thrace. As the army of the Turks started moving to Marmora Sea, British suggested a ceasefire. Eventually the ceasefire signed and British left İstanbul, Edirne, Tekirdağ, Kırklareli and Çanakkale. After the peace of Lausanne, the Turkish Republic is founded in October,29 1923.
Atatürk is still held in reverence by many Turks for both his military victories and his cultural and socio-political reforms.
Post war life and reforms
He was briefly married to Latife Uşaklıgil between 1923 and 1925.
Political consolidation
The government sent Mustafa Kemal Pasha to Samsun in North-Central Anatolia to take command of the nineteenth Army, a formation which, in accordance with the restrictions placed on the empire by the Allies in the Treaty of Sèvres, was supposed to be disbanded. This was meant to be an insult to Kemal, who, being a nationalist, was an enemy of Sultan Mehmed VI's capitulatory government. He then turned the tables and seized the opportunity to free Turkey from Allied occupation. In June 1919, on orders, he left the capital, Istanbul, and founded a Turkish nationalist movement in Samsun, but the movement would soon be based in Ankara. In April 1920, a provisional Parliament, the Grand National Assembly, was formed in Ankara, offering Kemal Pasha the title 'President of the National Assembly'. This body repudiated the Sultan's government in Istanbul and refused to recognize the Treaty of Sèvres.
The Greeks understood the threat posed to their position on the Aegean coast by the rapid consolidation of Kemal Pasha's forces in central Anatolia and advanced inland to meet them. Conflict between the two armies was inconclusive, but the nationalist cause was strengthened the next year (1921) with a series of brilliant victories. Twice (in January and again in April) Ismet Pasha defeated the Greek army at İnönü, blocking its advance into the interior of Anatolia. In July, in the face of a third offensive, the Turkish forces fell back in good order to the Sakarya river, eighty kilometers from Ankara, where Atatürk took personal command and decisively defeated the Greeks in the twenty day Battle of Sakarya in August-September 1921.
In the meanwhile, Kemal Pasha signed the Treaty of Kars (October 23, 1921) with the Soviet Union, a treaty of friendship in which Turkey ceded the city of Batumi, in present-day Georgia, to Lenin's Bolsheviks in return for sovereignty over the Armenian cities of Kars and Ardahan.
Final victory over the Greeks came in the Battle of Dumlupinar in August 1922. Kemal Pasha's victory in the War of Independence assured Turkey's sovereignty. The Treaty of Lausanne superseded the Treaty of Sèvres and Turkey recovered all of Anatolia and eastern Thrace from the Greeks and Armenians. The following years represented more friendly relations between the two countries, with the Greek Prime Minister (ex-enemy during the Turkish Independence war after WW1) Eleftherios Venizelos even nominating Ataturk for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1934.
Kemal Pasha spent the next several years consolidating his control over Turkey and instituting a variety of wide-ranging political, economic and social reforms.These reforms caused some opposition in Republican People's Party which was founded by Mustafa Kemal in September 9th 1923. Then Mustafa Kemal directed General Kazım Karabekir to establish Progressive Republican Party for opposition in Turkish National Assembly. This party opposed state socialism of Republican People's Party and suggested liberalism. But after some time, the new party was taken over by people Ataturk considered fundamentalists. In 1925, partly in response to the provocations of Sheikh Said, the Maintenance of Order Law was passed, giving Ataturk the authority to shut down subversive groups. The Republican People's Party was quickly disestablished under the new law, an act seen by some as necessary for preserving the Turkish state, but seen by others as the act of a dictator.
On August 11th, 1930 Mustafa Kemal decided to try a democratic movement once again. He charged Ali Fethi Okyar with establishing a new party. In Mustafa Kemal's letter to Ali Fethi Okyar, laicism was insisted. At first, brand new Liberal Republican Party succeeded all around the country. But once again the opposition party became too strong in its opposition to Atatürk's reforms, particularly in regards to the role of religion in public life. Finally Ali Fethi Okyar abolished his own party. And Mustafa Kemal never succeeded in democratising the parliamentary system.
Cultural reform
Mustafa Kemal regarded the fez (which Sultan Mahmud II had originally introduced to the Ottoman Empire's dress code in 1826) as a symbol of feudalism and banned it, encouraging Turkish men to wear European attire. The hijab (veil) for women, while never formally banned, was strongly discouraged; and women were encouraged to wear western apparel and enter the country's workforce. From 1926, the Islamic calendar was replaced with the Gregorian calendar. In 1928 the government decreed that the Arabic script be replaced by a modified Latin alphabet, and citizens between the ages of six and forty were required to attend school and learn the new alphabet. The conservative clergy fiercely opposed these reforms, trying in vain to maintain its traditionally strong influence. As a result of the reforms literacy increased dramatically. The reforms also included extensive removal of Arabic and Persian words from the Turkish language.
Mustafa Kemal opened new schools, where, as part of the curriculum, fine arts were taught to boys as well as girls. Girls had traditionally been excluded entirely from education, but a universal system of education was introduced for children of both sexes. He also lifted the Islamic ban on alcoholic beverages: Mustafa Kemal had an appreciation for the national liquor, rakı, and consumed vast quantities of it. In 1934 he promulgated a law requiring all Turks to adopt surnames. The Grand National Assembly gave him the deferential name Atatürk, meaning "ancestor Turk," and assumption of that name by other men is still forbidden by law.
Seeking to limit the influence of Islam on Turkish political and cultural institutions, which he regarded as one of the principal causes impeding Turkish development, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk abolished the 1300-year-old Islamic caliphate on 3 March 1924 and established a western-style separation of church and state ("mosque" and state) in Turkey. While promoting a secular Turkish state, Atatürk maintained the traditional Ottoman tolerance of religious diversity and freedoms, but viewed these freedoms in the western Enlightenment sense of freedom of conscience.
Atatürk himself was Muslim. In the book Kemalizm, Laiklik ve Demokrasi (Kemalism, Laicism and Democracy), Ahmet Taner Kışlalı quotes from a speech of Atatürk that may reveal some of the reasoning behind his support of the separation of Religion and state:
"Religion is an important institution. A nation without religion cannot survive. Yet it is also very important to note that religion is a link between Allah and the individual believer. The brokerage of the pious cannot be permitted. Those who use religion for their own benefit are detestable. We are against such a situation and will not allow it. Those who use religion in such a manner have fooled our people; it is against just such people that we have fought and will continue to fight. Know that whatever conforms to reason, logic, and the advantages and needs of our people conforms equally to [Islam]. If our religion did not conform to reason and logic, it would not be the perfect religion, the final religion" (31).
Such thoughts would seem to buttress the statement of Atatürk's biographer, Patrick Kinross, concerning how Atatürk—who prized science and rationalism as the basis of morality and philosophy—considered himself a rational believer of Islam in that Islam could complement science and rational thinking. The quote also shows how strongly Atatürk was opposed to fanaticism ("the pious"). Another speech quoted by Kışlalı relates Atatürk's thoughts on how Islam came to be in such a degenerate state:
"The foundation of our religion is very strong. The material is strong as well, but the building itself was neglected for hundreds of years. As the plaster dropped down, none thought to replace it and none felt the need to reinforce the building. Quite the contrary: many foreign elements and interpretations, as well as empty beliefs, came along and damaged it still more" (ibid.).
Women's rights
With abiding faith in the vital importance of women in society, Atatürk launched many reforms to give Turkish women equal rights and opportunities. The new Civil Code, adopted in 1926, abolished polygamy and recognized the equal rights of women in divorce, custody, and inheritance. The entire educational system from the grade school to the university became coeducational. Atatürk greatly admired the support that the national liberation struggle received from women and praised their many contributions: "In Turkish society, women have not lagged behind men in science, scholarship, and culture. Perhaps they have even gone further ahead." He gave women the same opportunities as men, including full political rights. In the mid-1930s, 18 women, among them a villager, were elected to the national parliament. Later, Turkey had the world's first female supreme court justice.
Culture and the Arts
Atatürk once stated: "Culture is the foundation of the Turkish Republic." His view of culture included both his own nation's creative legacy and what he saw as the more admirable values of world civilization, and he put an emphasis on humanism above all. He once described modern Turkey's ideological thrust as "a creation of patriotism blended with a lofty humanist ideal."
So as to assist in the creation of such a synthesis, Atatürk stressed the need to utilize the elements of the national heritage of the Turks and of Anatolia—including its ancient indigenous cultures—as well as the arts and techniques of other world civilizations, both past and present. He emphasized the study of earlier Anatolian civilizations, such as the Hittites, Phrygians, and Lydians. The pre-Islamic culture of the Turks became the subject of extensive research, and particular emphasis was laid upon the fact that—long before the Seljuk and Ottoman civilizations—the Turks had had a rich culture. Atatürk also stressed the folk arts of the countryside as a wellspring of Turkish creativity.
The visual and the plastic arts—whose development had on occasion been arrested by some Ottoman officials claiming that the depiction of the human form was idolatry—flourished during the presidency of Atatürk. Many museums were opened; architecture began to follow more modern trends; and classical Western music, opera, and ballet, as well as the theater, also took greater hold. Several hundred "People's Houses" and "People's Rooms" across the country allowed greater access to a wide variety of artistic activities, sports, and other cultural events. Book and magazine publications increased as well, and the film industry began to grow.
Legacy
Atatürk died in 1938 of cirrhosis, a probable consequence of his strenuous lifestyle and heavy drinking for many years.
His successor, İsmet İnönü, fostered a posthumous Atatürk personality cult which has survived to this day, even after Atatürk's own Republican People's Party lost power following democratic elections in 1950. Atatürk's face and name are seen and heard everywhere in Turkey: his portrait can be seen in all public buildings, on all Turkish banknotes, and even in the homes of many Turkish families - who often seem to consider him a secular sort of saint.
He is commemorated by many memorials all over Turkey, like the Atatürk International Airport in Istanbul and the Atatürk Bridge over the Golden Horn(Halic). Giant Atatürk statues loom over Istanbul and other Turkish cities, and practically any larger settlement has its own memorial to him.
See also
References
- Kinross, Patrick (2003) Ataturk: The Rebirth of a Nation, Phoenix Press. ISBN 1-84212-599-0
- Mango, Andrew (2004) Ataturk, John Murray. ISBN 0719565928
External links
- Ataturk.net, a website dedicated to Atatürk
- His biography and reforms
- Quotes of and quotes on Atatürk
- Atatürk Gallery by the Ministry of Culture, Republic of Turkey
- Biography, the Revolutions and a speech excerpt from the Ministry of Culture, Republic of Turkey
- www.turkishnews.com/Ataturk/life.htm
| Preceded by: - |
President of Turkey 1923–1938 |
Succeeded by: İsmet İnönü |
| Preceded by: - |
Prime Minister of Turkey 1920–1921 |
Succeeded by: Fevzi Çakmak |
