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ERDOGAN'S NEW TURKEY: GOODBYE ATATURK, HELLO ATATURK
Huffington post
March 11 2015
Stefan Ihrig . Polonsky Fellow, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's incumbent president and past prime
minister, struggles to escape the shadow of modern Turkey's founder.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk looms large over his country's past, present and
future. It is hard to dismantle the figure, the legacy and the lasting
authority of Ataturk, very much to Erdogan's dismay, especially as
Erdogan seeks to radically redefine the country -- from the place
of religion in society to a reform of the constitution, including a
shift to a presidential system.
For a short moment, a few months ago, it seemed as if Erdogan had
received help from an unlikely source: Adolf Hitler. As my recently
published book detailed for the first time, Hitler and his national
socialists were big fans of Ataturk and his "New Turkey" -- so much
so that they instituted a minor cult around the Turkish leader in
the Third Reich.
Hitler's dictum that Ataturk and the Turkish nationalist movement
had been his shining star in the darkness of the democratic Weimar
Republic in the 1920s, became the official line of the Third Reich.
When the book came out, I was anxious about the reactions in Turkey.
To my surprise, they were not only immediate but also quite positive.
But then I realized it was primarily newspapers close to the governing
Justice and Development Party (AKP) -- Erdogan's party -- that seemed
interested in discussing Nazi fandom of Ataturk as a means to discredit
Ataturk and his project.
As more people in Turkey had a chance to actually read the book,
however, less was said about it. To use whatever the Nazis said and
did for one's own political ends is always a difficult and dangerous
matter, no less so for the AKP as it tried to dismantle Ataturk --
and distance Erdogan from him.
The Nazis' one-sided love affair with Ataturk and his Turkey focused
on four aspects:
The Turkish war of independence against the Greeks and the Entente
powers, which followed World War I, and during which the Turks achieved
impressive results. In the end, the Treaty of Sèvres was modified with
much more favorable terms. The Germans, smothered under the Treaty
of Versailles, which imposed restrictive measures on development,
were envious.
The rapid modernization and re-construction of the country unimpeded
by a multi-party system and carried out by a strong leader, "according
to the will of the nation."
The marginalization of religion in public and political life.
The campaign to rid Turkey of its minority populations (mainly through
the Armenian genocide during World War I, which came before Ataturk,
and then through the Greco-Turkish population exchange at the close
of the Turkish war of independence).
All these, however, are fairly unusable in order to discredit Ataturk
from an AKP point of view -- except for the bit about secularism. (The
Nazis, actually, did not make much of this aspect of the New Turkey,
publicly anyway -- they feared the power of the churches and popular
sentiment.) Theoretically, that would leave the Turkish war of
independence and modernization under a strong leader, as well as
the Armenian genocide and the expulsion of the Greeks. The Armenian
genocide is something that is still apparently too hot to touch for
most Turkish politicians, even for the otherwise unimpeded Erdogan.
And the AKP surely would not go as far as to discredit the Turkish
war of independence, as it was a founding event for Turkey.
And by now it might become clear that the Nazi adulation of Ataturk
is a potential boomerang for the AKP if it really wanted to exploit
this episode of German-Turkish history. The only aspect of the Nazis'
fandom that may be at all usable from an AKP perspective to discredit
Ataturk via Hitler is the one dealing with the leader-figure Ataturk
and his monumental modernization project.
Today, when we look back at Kemalism in its first decades, we will
probably, with historical hindsight, want to stress its modernizing
foundations and its role as a midwife to democracy after World War II.
The more we know about the history of Turkey and the late Ottoman
Empire, the more we appreciate the many great things Ataturk did for
his country, many of them marvelous to the point of miraculous.
But we could also look at the darker sides of Kemalist rule and
remember how the opposition was dealt with, how there was no plural
democracy but a one-party system and how a small elite set the agenda
of the state, economy and society -- without so much as checks, much
less balance. And it was precisely this the Nazis had focused on:
the first decades as a leader-led, one-party state nearly unbounded in
its zeal and scope for reforms. While the Nazis make for poor guides
when it comes to politics and morality, in their fandom of Ataturk,
they identified the birth defect of modern Turkey.
"Erdogan can run and scream all he wants; he is Ataturk's kid."
The recently -- and Putinesquely -- elected President Erdogan likes
to refer to his state as the "new Turkey," just as Ataturk and his
Nazi admirers did. That by itself may not mean much, but the label
signifies the same: a Turkey that radically breaks with what was
before. Erdogan can run and scream all he wants; he is Ataturk's kid.
His emancipation from Ataturk, however, means doing what the father
has done, with similar tools and perhaps even scope, "only" with a
modified goal. It is still modernization, and potentially radical
at that, but a more Islamic modernization. That by itself does not
have to be a bad thing -- though we have yet to discover the full
implications of Erdogan's vision. The problem is, as always with
mega-projects, how to get there.
Ataturk's project did not ask the people beforehand, for example,
if they wanted to lose their language and their Ottoman-era dress.
Erdogan seems not to want to bother much with asking questions either,
and the envisaged refurbishment of the constitution, which may happen
later this year, could open the gates for a radical reconstruction
and redefinition of Turkey by the AKP.
Where did Ataturk's mandate come from? It always leads back to the
Turkish war of independence, and also to the historical context in
which it was fought. Ataturk's was a victory against the world's
most powerful countries, which had grown accustomed to treating the
Ottoman Empire in a quasi-colonial fashion. They had threatened to
cut down Turkey to a miniature version of itself, both geographically
and politically. Ataturk won a war that seemed unwinnable, and for
the rest of his life could draw on this, his national and political
mandate. What Ataturk's reformist frenzy did, however, was provide
a precedent for radical and, yes, un-democratic modernization.
Erdogan's "Turkish war of independence" was the (real and imagined)
inclusion of those previously excluded from Kemalist mainstream Turkey,
as well as the enormous economic growth of the last decade. Is this
a mandate for a radical break with what was before? For a break with
democracy, the rule of law and an open society?
Despite Erdogan's increasing conspiracy theory-driven rhetoric about
Turkey's foreign enemies, today's Turkey is not the Turkey of 1919 or
1923. We do not know yet what the AKP proposal for a new constitution
will look like. But one thing is for sure: Nobody should ever be
given Ataturk's mandate again -- if only because its potential scope
was utterly undemocratic.
Such a mandate requires an almost super-human self-constraint. And
in any case, Erdogan is no Islamic Ataturk anyway.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stefan-ihrig/erdogan-new-turkey-ataturk_b_6831206.html
Huffington post
March 11 2015
Stefan Ihrig . Polonsky Fellow, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's incumbent president and past prime
minister, struggles to escape the shadow of modern Turkey's founder.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk looms large over his country's past, present and
future. It is hard to dismantle the figure, the legacy and the lasting
authority of Ataturk, very much to Erdogan's dismay, especially as
Erdogan seeks to radically redefine the country -- from the place
of religion in society to a reform of the constitution, including a
shift to a presidential system.
For a short moment, a few months ago, it seemed as if Erdogan had
received help from an unlikely source: Adolf Hitler. As my recently
published book detailed for the first time, Hitler and his national
socialists were big fans of Ataturk and his "New Turkey" -- so much
so that they instituted a minor cult around the Turkish leader in
the Third Reich.
Hitler's dictum that Ataturk and the Turkish nationalist movement
had been his shining star in the darkness of the democratic Weimar
Republic in the 1920s, became the official line of the Third Reich.
When the book came out, I was anxious about the reactions in Turkey.
To my surprise, they were not only immediate but also quite positive.
But then I realized it was primarily newspapers close to the governing
Justice and Development Party (AKP) -- Erdogan's party -- that seemed
interested in discussing Nazi fandom of Ataturk as a means to discredit
Ataturk and his project.
As more people in Turkey had a chance to actually read the book,
however, less was said about it. To use whatever the Nazis said and
did for one's own political ends is always a difficult and dangerous
matter, no less so for the AKP as it tried to dismantle Ataturk --
and distance Erdogan from him.
The Nazis' one-sided love affair with Ataturk and his Turkey focused
on four aspects:
The Turkish war of independence against the Greeks and the Entente
powers, which followed World War I, and during which the Turks achieved
impressive results. In the end, the Treaty of Sèvres was modified with
much more favorable terms. The Germans, smothered under the Treaty
of Versailles, which imposed restrictive measures on development,
were envious.
The rapid modernization and re-construction of the country unimpeded
by a multi-party system and carried out by a strong leader, "according
to the will of the nation."
The marginalization of religion in public and political life.
The campaign to rid Turkey of its minority populations (mainly through
the Armenian genocide during World War I, which came before Ataturk,
and then through the Greco-Turkish population exchange at the close
of the Turkish war of independence).
All these, however, are fairly unusable in order to discredit Ataturk
from an AKP point of view -- except for the bit about secularism. (The
Nazis, actually, did not make much of this aspect of the New Turkey,
publicly anyway -- they feared the power of the churches and popular
sentiment.) Theoretically, that would leave the Turkish war of
independence and modernization under a strong leader, as well as
the Armenian genocide and the expulsion of the Greeks. The Armenian
genocide is something that is still apparently too hot to touch for
most Turkish politicians, even for the otherwise unimpeded Erdogan.
And the AKP surely would not go as far as to discredit the Turkish
war of independence, as it was a founding event for Turkey.
And by now it might become clear that the Nazi adulation of Ataturk
is a potential boomerang for the AKP if it really wanted to exploit
this episode of German-Turkish history. The only aspect of the Nazis'
fandom that may be at all usable from an AKP perspective to discredit
Ataturk via Hitler is the one dealing with the leader-figure Ataturk
and his monumental modernization project.
Today, when we look back at Kemalism in its first decades, we will
probably, with historical hindsight, want to stress its modernizing
foundations and its role as a midwife to democracy after World War II.
The more we know about the history of Turkey and the late Ottoman
Empire, the more we appreciate the many great things Ataturk did for
his country, many of them marvelous to the point of miraculous.
But we could also look at the darker sides of Kemalist rule and
remember how the opposition was dealt with, how there was no plural
democracy but a one-party system and how a small elite set the agenda
of the state, economy and society -- without so much as checks, much
less balance. And it was precisely this the Nazis had focused on:
the first decades as a leader-led, one-party state nearly unbounded in
its zeal and scope for reforms. While the Nazis make for poor guides
when it comes to politics and morality, in their fandom of Ataturk,
they identified the birth defect of modern Turkey.
"Erdogan can run and scream all he wants; he is Ataturk's kid."
The recently -- and Putinesquely -- elected President Erdogan likes
to refer to his state as the "new Turkey," just as Ataturk and his
Nazi admirers did. That by itself may not mean much, but the label
signifies the same: a Turkey that radically breaks with what was
before. Erdogan can run and scream all he wants; he is Ataturk's kid.
His emancipation from Ataturk, however, means doing what the father
has done, with similar tools and perhaps even scope, "only" with a
modified goal. It is still modernization, and potentially radical
at that, but a more Islamic modernization. That by itself does not
have to be a bad thing -- though we have yet to discover the full
implications of Erdogan's vision. The problem is, as always with
mega-projects, how to get there.
Ataturk's project did not ask the people beforehand, for example,
if they wanted to lose their language and their Ottoman-era dress.
Erdogan seems not to want to bother much with asking questions either,
and the envisaged refurbishment of the constitution, which may happen
later this year, could open the gates for a radical reconstruction
and redefinition of Turkey by the AKP.
Where did Ataturk's mandate come from? It always leads back to the
Turkish war of independence, and also to the historical context in
which it was fought. Ataturk's was a victory against the world's
most powerful countries, which had grown accustomed to treating the
Ottoman Empire in a quasi-colonial fashion. They had threatened to
cut down Turkey to a miniature version of itself, both geographically
and politically. Ataturk won a war that seemed unwinnable, and for
the rest of his life could draw on this, his national and political
mandate. What Ataturk's reformist frenzy did, however, was provide
a precedent for radical and, yes, un-democratic modernization.
Erdogan's "Turkish war of independence" was the (real and imagined)
inclusion of those previously excluded from Kemalist mainstream Turkey,
as well as the enormous economic growth of the last decade. Is this
a mandate for a radical break with what was before? For a break with
democracy, the rule of law and an open society?
Despite Erdogan's increasing conspiracy theory-driven rhetoric about
Turkey's foreign enemies, today's Turkey is not the Turkey of 1919 or
1923. We do not know yet what the AKP proposal for a new constitution
will look like. But one thing is for sure: Nobody should ever be
given Ataturk's mandate again -- if only because its potential scope
was utterly undemocratic.
Such a mandate requires an almost super-human self-constraint. And
in any case, Erdogan is no Islamic Ataturk anyway.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stefan-ihrig/erdogan-new-turkey-ataturk_b_6831206.html