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The Turkish Revolution consisted of two successive and intermingled parts: The War of National Liberation (or independence) and the Reforms of Ataturk. Since he started to build a new political and social structure during the War of Liberation, his later reforms which were then symbolized as “six arrows” should be studied as meaningful parts of a functional unity, namely the Turkish Revolution.
1. Main Principles of the Ataturk Revolution: Anti-Imperialism and Westernism. The Two Pillars of National Independence
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk assumed political power through a War of Liberation against the victorious powers of the First World War. Thus his anti-imperialism was the outcome of his military actions. But to view his stand against imperialism only as military phenomenon would be a great fallacy. As a member of the Ottoman intelligentsia, he believed that the final collapse of the Empire had been due to economic, political, and military exploitation by the West. Thus, his firm stand for “unconditional and total independence” was something much more than a military view. As Ataturk once stated.:
Gentlemen, when history applies itself to searching the causes of the grandeur and the decadence of a people, it invokes political, military, and social reasons. It is evident that ultimately all the reasons spring from social conditions but that which is in closest bearing to the existence, the prosperity and the decadence of a people, is its economics. This historical truth is confirmed in our existence and our national history. In fact, if one examines the history of the Turkish people, one will see that her grandeur and her decadence are merely corollaries of her economic life.[]
When such words are supported by his summation that “The new Turkish state will not be a military state, but an economic state,” the anti-imperialist nature of the Turkish Revolution can be better understood. both speeches were given prior to the proclamation of the Republic, but after the War of Liberation was completed. Thus, the economic content of “total independence” cannot possibly be overlooked in his actions.
Interestingly enough, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s anti-imperialist views were based on his concept of western civilization. In other words, he knew that the only way to become a western society was to be free from western economic and political exploitation. I think the difference between his revolutionary movement and the prior attempts to “save the Empire” lies at this very point: Mustafa Kemal Ataturk aimed at creating a western society, whereas the westernist movements prior to his time were geared to imitating western societies. Those attempts were marked by the importation of western educational institutions while Mustafa Kemal imported the whole ideology and political structure of the West, including “national sovereignty an national independence.”
2. The Social and Cultural Reforms: Imposition of a New Way of Life
Kemalism was considered an anti-religious ideology but in fact it had nothing against the Islamic religion except to deny religion as a source of political power. Although this may sound like an innocent statement today, it was then a most serious attack against the Islamic religion which had sprung from a systematic set of principles regulating political power as well.[] Kemalism was regarded as an infidel ideology by some religious leaders who had lost their status in infidel ideology by some religious leaders who had lost their status in the change of the power structure in Turkey. Another rationale behind his being called an infidel was his firm stand against the caliphate and sultanate as politico-religious posts. He thought that they should be abolished in the course of the establishment of a secular nation-state.
Since the last Sultan-Caliph had been in collaboration with the Entente Powers during the invasion of Anatolia and had taken drastic actions against the Nationalists (Kemalists) in Anatolia, Mustafa Kemal as the victorious leader of the national resistance, was in quite an advantageous position vis-a-vis the Sultan. moreover, since the Ankara republican government had negotiated the Treaty of Lausanne on July 24, 1923 with the western governments, the very existence of the Istanbul government of the Sultan had become an anachronism.
Thus, the most difficult reform, namely the elimination of the Sultanate, was realized in the name of “national sovereignty” during a lull in peace talks in Lausanne on November 1, 1922, following a ruling of the Grand National Assembly about the replacement of the Ottoman Empire by the new Turkish Sate on October 30, 1922. The proclamation of the Republic became the next necessary step in the process o political reform even though some of Mustafa Kemal’s closest friends opposed the idea.[] However, it was carried through on October 29, 1923. As Mustafa Kemal Ataturk decided to impose a western style of life on the society, the remnants of the old regime, especially the political ones which were intermingle with the religious dogmas, had to be swept away to pave the way for the new structure. The Caliphate was abolished within this context.
One should remember that the Islamic political system had been dominant for centuries: thus, eliminating the Caliphate was a more difficult task than the proclamation of the Republic. There was strong opposition to such an act even in the Grand National Assembly. Actually when the Grand National Assembly appointed Abdulmecid Efendi (son of Abdulaziz) as Caliph to replace the runaway Sultan-Caliph, Vahdettin, an opposition front was formed on the grounds that the Grand National Assembly did not have the authority to appoint a religious leader.[] Nevertheless, the Grand National Assembly first appointed him as Caliph of the Muslim community on November 18, 1922, and then on March 3, 1924 abolished the Caliphate on the grounds that the Caliph had breached the law by attempting to revitalize the Caliphate as a political post.
It is interesting to note that six consecutive reforms concerning religion, military organization and education were executed on the same day of March 3, 1924, after Mustafa Kemal had conferred with military commanders in Izmir. Those reforms were the abolition of the Caliphate, the termination of the religious educational system, the unification of education in secular schools, the closing of the Ministry of Canon Law, the abolition of the Ministry of the General Staff and the establishment of the General Directorate of Religious Affairs.
In keeping with republican theory the military and the religious cadres were now placed under civilian control. Symbolically, with the removal of the Ministry of the General Staff, any opposition to the abolition of the Ministry of Canon Law could be countered by indicating that even the General Staff which had led the War of National Independence was placed a civilian control. Actually, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had been against any military interference in politics since the time of the Young Turk Period and this issue was one of the chief points of conflict between him and the Union and Progress Party.
The reorganization of education was to become one of the main elements for the secularization of culture. This change took place at the same time but without any opposition at all. The reform of headgear, set in motion by a law passed on November 25, 1925, was designed to change the appearance of the people as well as to give a sense of cultural symbol. In some areas of daily life, integration with the modern world and the reformist movement entailed the use of the western European calendar and methods of keeping time. On December 26th, 1925, the old lunar calendar and the old method of calculating time were changed and the day of rest moved from Friday to Sunday.
One of the most important cultural reforms was the change of the alphabet from Arabic to Latin letters. This drastic change not only facilitated the increase in literacy, but also served to strengthen the image of the secular nation-state. By changing the alphabet from the Arabic script of the Holy Quran to the Latin script, Turkish language and culture were emancipated from the influences of the Arabic script and Islamic culture.
In the meantime, the legal structure was secularized. Parallel to the abolition of the Ministry of Canon Law and Pious Foundations, the new Turkish civil code, which was an adaptation of the Swiss civil code, was put into effect on October 4, 1926. The new penal code, commercial code and the law of contracts also came into force the same day as meaningful parts of the legal code. The secularization of the Constitution and reforms such as the assumption of family names, and the abolition of religious titles, followed as a logical sequence. The general method of bringing about socio-cultural change in Turkey obviously required some political force by the victorious nationalist-revolutionaries. Also the integration of those reforms into a consistent ideology with the aid of organizational mechanisms was not neglected.
3. “Six Arrows”: An Attempt to Create a Consistent Ideology
The whole decade of the 1920’s was marked by reformist legal actions which were geared toward the reorganization of the total political and socio-cultural structure of the new Republic. In the early thirties, while the world was under the pressures of the “Great Recession” of 1929, the Turkish Revolution seemed to reach a plateau with a deadly threat of stagnation. Thus, Ataturk decided to establish a “loyal opposition” to give a political dynamism to the ongoing Turkish Revolution. Though the Party was formed through the backing of Ataturk and his friends,[] the support for it by the reactionaries became uncontrollable and turned out to be a real threat to the social-cultural and political reforms which were still in their period of infancy. As a result of this unexpected and unwanted development, the party was closed three months after its foundation, and Ataturk decided to revitalize the revolutionary spirit of the Republican People’s Party through ideological and educational programs.
Since the Kemalist ideology had not been articulated as a compact school of thought in the beginning, the only group which emerged with the function of mobilizing the intelligentsia (rather than the masses) was a number of writers organized around the political monthly Kadro.[] Kadro tried to develop an ideology for the Kemalist revolution. Their main orientation was later formulated as the “center-periphery relations” regarding the world economic system by thinkers such as Maurice Dobb, Immanuel Wallerstein, Arghiri Emmanuel and others. They believed that the main contradiction lay with the developed and underdeveloped nations rather than among classes in the same society. In addition to their quasi-Marxist approach to the world economic and political system, the group around Kadro tried to create an “enthusiasm” for the Turkish Revolution by bringing psychological and socio-psychological factors to the fore.[]
In the thirties, the world was witnessing the rise of fascism and the institutionalization of communism, and the newly emerged Turkish Republic was under the ideological impact of both political systems. Though Kadro was quasi-Marxist, the higher officials of the Republican People’s Party were rightist-oriented authoritarians. Among the writers of Kadro, there were Republican People’s Party deputies and some close friends of Ataturk. Thus Kadro’s power came from informal relations with Ataturk and Inonu, the two leaders of the Revolution. But the officials of the Party were more powerful than Kadro, because they were the official representatives of the establishment that had actually been created and controlled by Ataturk and Inonu.
Kadro was at first supported and then tolerated by both Ataturk and Inonu against the party organization just to create a challenge to the bureaucracy which was intermingled with the Party. When the issue boiled down to a real ideological controversy between the ranks of the Party and the writers of Kadro, however, Ataturk and Inonu favored the organizational setup and the group around Kadro was dissolved. The formulation of the Turkish revolution in ideological terms was in a sense “forced” by the above-noted internal and external factors.
The six principles, symbolized as the “six arrows” in the party flag, were pronounced as the ideology of “Kemalizm” in the Fourth Congress of the Republican People’s Party in 1935. The six principles, although stated at different times, formed an integrated whole since each principle had its own characteristics but became meaningful in conjunction with the others. Those principles which can be considered the pillars of the new State, were nationalism, republicanism, secularism, populism, etatism and reformism or revolutionism.
Nationalism.
Turkish nationalism had been the most retarded nationalist movement in the Ottoman Empire and had only emerged at the time of the Union and Progress Party, almost after the Empire had been dissolved. The champion of Turkish nationalism was Ziya Gokalp, a pioneer in sociology and the “ideologue” for the Union and Progress faction. In his way of expressing it, “Turkism could be strengthened by filling the patterns of western civilization with Turkish Culture.”[]
Gokalp had systematically advocated domination of Turkish culture with forms of western civilization rather than importing institutions as they had developed in the west. His sociological orientation, taking a nation as a political and cultural unity, helped him his advocacy of Turkism on “scientific” grounds. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s movement and Ziya Gokalp’s ideas had a close interaction in that Kemalism was affected by Ziya Gokalp in the formulation of nationalism as a principle, and Ziya Gokalp was affected by Kemalism which rejected any ambition beyond the borders of the new Turkey. There was a revision of the Pan-Turanism of Ziya Gokalp in the light of the Kemalist revolution. Ataturk knew only too well that the new Turkish Republic needed cultural traits for a new society because he had denied the Ottoman cultural heritage. Towards the end of his life, he placed special emphasis on Turkish language and history. He tried to reinforce Turkish nationalism by eliminating the cultural duality and emphasizing the historical roots of the Turks as a nation.
Ataturk’s nationalism was not based on race or religion. On the contrary, the main orientation was political and the “Turk” was defined as “anybody who lives within the borders of the Turkish Republic.” Thus, religious minorities such as Jews, Armenians and Greeks were given equal rights with the Muslim Turks, and more importantly, really treated equally (if not privileged) by the new Republican administration which denied the religious approach of the Ottoman bureaucracy. In this sense, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s nationalism was not segregative, but integrative.[]
Republicanism.
Since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had to put an end to the Ottoman dynasty which had blocked his path toward a contemporary political structure. Republicanism seemed to be the only solution for that time. Actually, nationalism and republicanism supplemented each other with the backing of populism and secularism. The Empire was non-existent, the religious-political head and symbol of that Empire had lost his functions and the new society did not need a Sultan-Caliph under whom the Muslim communities would be integrated.[] Republicanism was also instrumental in laying the necessary theoretical foundations for the establishment of democracy in the future. There is no doubt that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk meant the achievement of a democratic structure for the future, as he openly stated that a republican regime means the administration of the State through a democratic system. “We established the Republic, and now as it reaches its tenth year of age, all the necessary conditions for a democracy ought to be realized one by one when the time comes.”[] The principle of republicanism gained some social content when coupled with populism, another one of the “six arrows,” as it was the functional idea for the foundation of a nation-state, hand in hand with nationalism.
Secularism.
Secularism was the political, legal and socio-cultural principle which was complementary to the concept of a modern sate. Like all the principles of Kemalism, it had developed as a reaction to the Ottoman system. It meant the separation of religion from legal, educational and cultural life. Almost all the important reforms were based on this principle: the unification of education, the adoption of the new civil code, the abolition of the Caliphate, and other changes.
Because of the influence of secularism on all Kemalist reforms, the “evolutionary cadres of the new republic were accused of being anti-religious. The new revolutionaries wanted to change the six hundred year old Islamic traditions that had affected the social, cultural and political spheres of the Ottoman Empire. Fierce opposition was expected and the religious leaders and the revolutionaries became rival parties in terms of status and power in the society.
As the traditional forces in the Ottoman Empire allied with religious functionaries against any kind of effort towards a modern state, secularism was also a means of eliminating traditional obstacles to modernization. Far from being anti-religious in principle, by separating religion from other facets, secularism save Islam from being crushed by the Kemalist reformation in the reorganization process of Turkish society.
Although Mustafa Kemal had used religion and religious leaders at times, he apparently held no strong belief himself. “... Ataturk and his colleagues have not instituted anti-religious measures of sentiments, as have dictatorships of Russia and Germany. While they have not displayed anti-religious attitudes, it is probably correct to say that they have no love for hidebound ecclesiastics and ecclesiasticism.”[] Ataturk could not afford to sacrifice religion in his role as a political reformer. The following observation sums up the Kemalist behavior on this subject: “... It is plain that one cannot categorically assert either that the government (of the new Republic) is favorable or that it is hostile to Islam. The truth of the matter seems to be that it is distinctly opportunistic in its attitude: that it is favorable to whatever in Islam is consistent with the republican ideals, relentlessly opposed to anything which might endanger Kemalist success, and, for the rest, more or less neutral.”[]
It should also be remembered that secularism was used as a theoretical base for the transfer of political power from the religious-traditional post of the Sultan-Caliph to the republican post of the President.
Populism.
Populism was only a social approach geared to eliminate cultural dualism, but also a political principle which was to deny class differentiation. The Party program read as follows on this subject:
We consider the individuals who accept an absolute equality before law, and who recognize no privileges for any individual, family, class or community, to be of the people and for the people (populist),
It is one of our main principles to consider the people of the Turkish Republic, not as composed of different classes, but as a community divided into various professions according to the requirements of the division of labor for the individual and the social life of the Turkish people....
The aims of our Party, with this principle, are to secure social order and solidarity instead of class conflict, and to establish harmony of interest. The benefits are to be proportionate to the aptitude and to the amount of work.[]
The social policy of the new republic was rather a “solidarist” one, and aligned specifically neither with capitalism nor socialism. Populism in this sense was not only a symbol for social policy but also a guide to economic activities. In fact, Ataturk identified populism with the national economic policy.[]
All the reforms were the products of the intelligentsia or the ruling class in the young republic as there was no other social force in existence. Regarded as such, populism was also an elitist approach to the society and etatism, which was based on populism as well as nationalism, resulted in the development of capitalism.
Etatism.
Etatism was a means of building a national economy based on private enterprise, through the protection and support of the state, and in some instances, its direct intervention in the form of “State Economic Enterprises.”
As a Kemalist principle, etatism was instrumental in the creation of an independent economy rather than a state-controlled one. A Communist economy was never a goal of Kemalism. Etatism was a principle necessary to complete the economic part of the socio-political transformation of the Ottoman society into a modern state. It accelerated the economic processes that the West had experienced during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[]
It was stated that ... “the theory of solidarism, which developed in nineteenth-century Europe as a reaction to both classical liberalism and Marxism, had a profound impact on the Kemalist principle of populism. but because the theory of solidarism was not an adequately developed social theory, it did not provide the necessary guidance for socio-economic transformation.”[] Etatism was the principle which filled this gap in the Turkish transformation.
Reformism (Revolutionism).
Reformism (revolutionism) also lent its nature to the other five principles. It had two fundamental meanings: 1) the reforms which had been achieved through the revolutionary cadres of the new republic should be preserved; 2) the spirit of reformism (revolutionism) should dominate the future of Turkish society. Mustafa Kemal was a realistic and pragmatic leader. He knew only too well that drastic changes and reforms, achieved in such a short period of time, would need a longer period for assimilation. Reformism (revolutionism) stated as the sixth principle would become the revolutionary spirit that should continue through time to aid this absorption. He also believed that the re-structuring of society could be achieved through new reforms to be added to the ones already introduced. Perhaps his very strong reliance on Turkish youth as a major force to carry on with his reforms sprang room this belief. It was an indispensable principle for Kemalism, which in itself was a reaction to the old structure, and could be erased overnight. Thus, reformism (revolutionism) can be viewed as the mainspring of the new cultural synthesis sought for the young Republic.
4. Organizational Mechanisms for the Ideological Re-orientation of the Society
What Mustafa Kemal had sought in the realm of culture for the new state could be expressed as an “induced acculturation” in social anthropological terms: all this political, social, educational and cultural reforms were geared to introducing a contemporary western culture into a traditional Islamic Turkish society. Since he was deprived of the backing of any strong emergent class (such as the bourgeoisie in the French Revolution or the party of the proletariat in the Russian Revolution), he had to build up a sound organizational structure through which he could manage the society. He also lacked any organizational support as he had already broken his ties with the Party of Union and Progress. Thus, he had to start from the grass-roots level.
The leverage points were the “Defense of Rights” organizations which had started after the invasion of Anatolia by the Greeks, urged on by the victorious powers of the First World War. The merger of those local resistance organizations under the name of “The Association for the Defense of Rights of Anatolia and Rumelia (Thrace)” was realized in the Sivas Congress on September 7, 1919, and Mustafa Kemal was elected as the permanent chairman of the steering committee.
When the Grand National Assembly was inaugurated on April 23, 1920, after the Ottoman Parliament was dissolved by the occupying powers, Mustafa Kemal, being the elected chairman of the assembly, started to control the whole governmental apparatus.
Although such a legitimate source of power and the control of the channels of communication seem sufficient for political and military domination over a society, it is evident that the acculturation process needed some additional and more subtle mechanism. Mustafa Kemal made use of three such mechanisms: the Republican Party, “the People’s Houses” (Halkevleri) and two autonomous research associations, the Turkish History Society and the Turkish Language Society. later he added a fourth one, the universities.
The Party
The formation of a Party was a necessary step for Mustafa Kemal, as he was trying to establish a modern state which could not possibly function without such a political organization. Actually, a party-like group called the “Association for the Defense of Rights of Anatolia and Rumelia” was formed in the first Grand National Assembly out of political necessity. Mustafa Kemal needed a formal organization to exert his revolutionary control over the Assembly, which was composed of various groups from Istanbul and from Anatolia. The second goal for the formation of such a “group” was to start building a new constitutional structure for the new state.[]
After the elections were held for the Second National Assembly, the Association for the Defense of Rights was changed into the Republican People’s Party on September 9, 1923. Mustafa Kemal had declared nine principles under the heading of the “Program of Populism” five months previously, in order to present a coherent program to the public prior to the elections. Among those principles were national sovereignty, the irrevocable character of the abolition of the Sultanate, the abolition of some taxes, and the restructuring of the legal system according to secular principles.
Ataturk planned to use the Republican Party for two different purposes at two different levels. First, he made use of it as an instrument for his legitimate power, based on national representation. Secondly, the party became a sort of “school for the education of the Turkish people.” Thus, the party was different from classical political parties, in the sense that it was the channel “from the top to the bottom” of the social order regarding new reforms and also a mechanism of “popular representation.” Not only was the formulation of the “Kemalist ideology” realized within the party, but also mass education concerning a new culture and a new political structure was performed through the party organization.
The People’s Houses
Since the Party was mostly of a political nature, the acculturation process required widespread dissemination of new cultural values which needed some additional mechanisms. Such necessity cannot be overemphasized in the face of the inert character of the rural masses conditioned for centuries by the religious structure of the political system.
The people’s houses were formed by the Republican People’s Party as an “institution to provide the national organization of the society in the area of culture.”[] “Strengthening the national conscience” was among the stated aims of the people’s houses.[] The people’s houses had nine branches of activity which sought to cover all the cultural life of the society: 1) Language and literature, 2) Fine Arts, 3) Libraries and Publications, 8) Rural Development (Koyculuk), 9) History and Museums.[]
As can be seen clearly from the above noted divisions, the people’s houses were designed to “mobilize people” according to the new cultural aims as well as to launch a “community development” program on a national scale. Especially, activities such as “social assistance” and “rural development” (koyculuk) at a national level allow one to assert that the people’s houses were the first attempts at “community development” which later became universal through the programs of the United Nations. It should also be noted that a nation-wide education program was started through the same organizational setup. Later on, such educational activities were followed by a new educational experience based on “learning through doing! in the villages, under the name of “village institutes.”
People’s houses and later on, village institutes, became places also wherein the folklore of the local communities were studied and developed by works of art and socio-cultural monographs. The cultural and ideological activities of the people’s houses and people’s rooms (small branches of the people’s houses) were under the watchful eye of the Republican People’s Party. Though everybody could participate in the activities, only party members could be elected to administrative posts.
In 1945, when their activities peaked, the number of people’s houses reached four hundred thirty-five: and the number of people’s rooms, two thousand seven hundred eighteen. The figures for their activities were really impressive in terms of the number of participants. The activities of 1940 were reported as more than five thousand conferences, two thousand theater performances, one thousand two hundred concerts (classical music), two thousand film showings, about two thousand “family entertainments,” some two thousand villages, more than forty-thousand cases of social assistance, one hundred and fifty exhibitions of fine arts, four hundred other exhibitions, various public education courses attended by 40,000 persons and more than two million readers of four hundred thousand books in public libraries.
The Turkish History Society and the Turkish Language Society
It was early understood by the party leaders that the ideology of Kemalism should be supported through scientific research on Turkish nationalism. The roots of Turkish culture were to be brought to the fore from the darkness of the past where they had been overshadowed since the seventh century by the magnificent Islamic culture. Thus studies on Turkish history and on Turkish language were given special emphasis by the revolutionary cadres of the new Republic, and personally by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk himself. Efforts in both historical and philological research were especially geared to freeing the new society from an Ottoman cultural heritage which had imposed Arabic and even Persian cultures on the people of Anatolia.
Historical research went for back even to the time of the Hittites in Asia Minor and the Turkic peoples of Central Asia.
It was also contended that a new culture requires a new language. After the reform of the alphabet in 1928, the studies were started to “purify” the Turkish language from Arabic and Persian. Actually it was an effort to abandon the cosmopolitan language of the Ottomans, which had been spoken and written mostly by a “palace culture”, and to substitute the everyday language of the “people” of the Turkish Republic. Coupled with the legal alphabet reform, the reform of the Turkish Language became not only a cultural, but also a political, symbol of the struggle of Turkish nationalism against Ottoman-style culture.
Ataturk was a keen enough revolutionary to realize the shortcomings of imposing new ideas by force. He thus formed two independent and autonomous organizations to study Turkish history and Turkish Language on April 10, 1931 and July 12, 1932 respectively. The cultural mobilization went forward methodically with the inauguration of the first “people’s house” on February 19, 1932 and the university reform, on November 18, 1933. While the new ideology was formulated within the Party and by the Societies of Turkish History and Turkish Language, the People’s Houses were used as the channels through which this ideology was transferred to the masses.
The ultimate aim was to create an original and independent culture for the Turkish Republic. Mustafa Kemal and his followers sought to amalgamate the Western, Islamic and Turkish civilizations by imposing Western models upon traditional Islamic culture to create the new Turkish civilization.
The Role of the Universities
The higher educational institutions have always been on the progressive side in Turkey since 1863, the date when the first university in the modern sense opened. As soon as it started to train students along modern secular lines, the reactionary religious people successfully intervened and forced the closing of the first Dar-ul-Funun (the house of sciences). Thereafter, the professors were exiled. It was reopened during the oppressive reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II in order to be used as a source of support for the throne.
With the proclamation of the Republic, Istanbul University which had already been reformed in 1919, was given new facilities and in 1924 legally reorganized along the lines of a modern institution. On that date, the famous pedagogue, Ismayil Hakki Baltacioglu was appointed President.
Nevertheless, the expected dynamic support from revolutionary cadres of the new Republic was not immediately available in the University community, thus making it dysfunctional for the revolution in the early years of the Republic. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, being a great believer in a secular, positive approach to the arts and sciences, supported Istanbul University and established a new one in Ankara.
Istanbul University, housed in a new structure, reopened on November 18, 1933. The 1930’s were the years of the rise of National-Socialists in Germany. Thus many university professors, seeking asylum from Hitler’s regime, came upon Ataturk’s invitation and helped contribute to the development of scientific knowledge in the areas of law, finance, sociology, and medicine. In 1936 the Faculty of Language, History and Geography was opened in Ankara. Thereafter the scientific contribution to the cultural revival of the young Republic was also carried out there. The universities, in their role as autonomous organizations of research and teaching, developed the social sciences and humanities in Turkey placing Turkish cultural identity on a sound basis. Such an achievement was brought abut through the autonomous structure of the universities which is still protected carefully by the academic community against pressures to place them under political control. Such a change would certainly hinder scientific objectivity. While here we have singled out two institutions, such as the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul and the State Conservatory in Ankara, contributed their share to the development of Turkish art and culture.
5. Sociological Appraisal
Having seen that the revolution and the subsequent reforms were realized through the systematic efforts of a group of the ruling elite of the Ottoman Empire, we realize that Ataturk was not the leader of a rising socio-economic class but rather the leader of a statist-elitist group formed by the civilian and military bureaucracy of the Empire who had worked out an alliance with some of the landowners during the War of Independence.
As the new elite was a product of the Ottoman system, class development in the Republic was hindered. Because of this historical and sociological fact, the Turkish Revolution produced a political change at its outset.[] Deprived of the support of a rising class in society, Ataturk was hindered in his goals and had to introduce socio-economic and cultural changes through his political power.
The reforms were designed to create a western-type society in the absence of a powerful capitalist class to support it, and thus, in a sense, the reforms were designed to create such a class. An alliance between the ruling elite and the weak intermediary classes of landowners and entrepreneurial groups was instigated by the revolutionary cadres. This strategy resulted in the cooperation between the bureaucracy of the Republic and the local notables such as landowners, tradesmen and other sections of the hereditary intermediary classes of the Ottomans.[]
Legal, educational, and cultural reforms, in addition to political ones, were used as a means of accelerating socio-economic and cultural progress along the lines the western world had followed a century before. Thus, in sociological terms, Ataturk’s reforms were not the natural result of socio-economic and cultural changes, but ideological positions imposed to induce such changes. In other words, the Turkish Revolution is an example of infrastructural changes through superstructural means. By using the power of the State, Ataturk created a new socio-economic and cultural order. however, this movement was so alien to the existing socio-economic structure of the Ottomans that it did not even have philosophers, thinkers and writers.[] Ziya Gokalp, the only theoretician of the Party of Union and Progress, was limited in his influence, as his approach to the revolution was too general to have a deep impact on the Republic.
There is no doubt that Ataturk’s revolution was an anti-imperialist one, but it had fought with the very weapons developed by the West. Westernization became the response to the imperialism of the West. As the reforms had to achieve rapid westernization, the principles of republicanism, nationalism, populism, secularism, etatism, and reformism (revolutionism) were chosen as the accelerators in order to attain the socio-economic characteristics of western countries in one tenth of the time actually taken by Europe.
1. Main Principles of the Ataturk Revolution: Anti-Imperialism and Westernism. The Two Pillars of National Independence
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk assumed political power through a War of Liberation against the victorious powers of the First World War. Thus his anti-imperialism was the outcome of his military actions. But to view his stand against imperialism only as military phenomenon would be a great fallacy. As a member of the Ottoman intelligentsia, he believed that the final collapse of the Empire had been due to economic, political, and military exploitation by the West. Thus, his firm stand for “unconditional and total independence” was something much more than a military view. As Ataturk once stated.:
Gentlemen, when history applies itself to searching the causes of the grandeur and the decadence of a people, it invokes political, military, and social reasons. It is evident that ultimately all the reasons spring from social conditions but that which is in closest bearing to the existence, the prosperity and the decadence of a people, is its economics. This historical truth is confirmed in our existence and our national history. In fact, if one examines the history of the Turkish people, one will see that her grandeur and her decadence are merely corollaries of her economic life.[]
When such words are supported by his summation that “The new Turkish state will not be a military state, but an economic state,” the anti-imperialist nature of the Turkish Revolution can be better understood. both speeches were given prior to the proclamation of the Republic, but after the War of Liberation was completed. Thus, the economic content of “total independence” cannot possibly be overlooked in his actions.
Interestingly enough, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s anti-imperialist views were based on his concept of western civilization. In other words, he knew that the only way to become a western society was to be free from western economic and political exploitation. I think the difference between his revolutionary movement and the prior attempts to “save the Empire” lies at this very point: Mustafa Kemal Ataturk aimed at creating a western society, whereas the westernist movements prior to his time were geared to imitating western societies. Those attempts were marked by the importation of western educational institutions while Mustafa Kemal imported the whole ideology and political structure of the West, including “national sovereignty an national independence.”
2. The Social and Cultural Reforms: Imposition of a New Way of Life
Kemalism was considered an anti-religious ideology but in fact it had nothing against the Islamic religion except to deny religion as a source of political power. Although this may sound like an innocent statement today, it was then a most serious attack against the Islamic religion which had sprung from a systematic set of principles regulating political power as well.[] Kemalism was regarded as an infidel ideology by some religious leaders who had lost their status in infidel ideology by some religious leaders who had lost their status in the change of the power structure in Turkey. Another rationale behind his being called an infidel was his firm stand against the caliphate and sultanate as politico-religious posts. He thought that they should be abolished in the course of the establishment of a secular nation-state.
Since the last Sultan-Caliph had been in collaboration with the Entente Powers during the invasion of Anatolia and had taken drastic actions against the Nationalists (Kemalists) in Anatolia, Mustafa Kemal as the victorious leader of the national resistance, was in quite an advantageous position vis-a-vis the Sultan. moreover, since the Ankara republican government had negotiated the Treaty of Lausanne on July 24, 1923 with the western governments, the very existence of the Istanbul government of the Sultan had become an anachronism.
Thus, the most difficult reform, namely the elimination of the Sultanate, was realized in the name of “national sovereignty” during a lull in peace talks in Lausanne on November 1, 1922, following a ruling of the Grand National Assembly about the replacement of the Ottoman Empire by the new Turkish Sate on October 30, 1922. The proclamation of the Republic became the next necessary step in the process o political reform even though some of Mustafa Kemal’s closest friends opposed the idea.[] However, it was carried through on October 29, 1923. As Mustafa Kemal Ataturk decided to impose a western style of life on the society, the remnants of the old regime, especially the political ones which were intermingle with the religious dogmas, had to be swept away to pave the way for the new structure. The Caliphate was abolished within this context.
One should remember that the Islamic political system had been dominant for centuries: thus, eliminating the Caliphate was a more difficult task than the proclamation of the Republic. There was strong opposition to such an act even in the Grand National Assembly. Actually when the Grand National Assembly appointed Abdulmecid Efendi (son of Abdulaziz) as Caliph to replace the runaway Sultan-Caliph, Vahdettin, an opposition front was formed on the grounds that the Grand National Assembly did not have the authority to appoint a religious leader.[] Nevertheless, the Grand National Assembly first appointed him as Caliph of the Muslim community on November 18, 1922, and then on March 3, 1924 abolished the Caliphate on the grounds that the Caliph had breached the law by attempting to revitalize the Caliphate as a political post.
It is interesting to note that six consecutive reforms concerning religion, military organization and education were executed on the same day of March 3, 1924, after Mustafa Kemal had conferred with military commanders in Izmir. Those reforms were the abolition of the Caliphate, the termination of the religious educational system, the unification of education in secular schools, the closing of the Ministry of Canon Law, the abolition of the Ministry of the General Staff and the establishment of the General Directorate of Religious Affairs.
In keeping with republican theory the military and the religious cadres were now placed under civilian control. Symbolically, with the removal of the Ministry of the General Staff, any opposition to the abolition of the Ministry of Canon Law could be countered by indicating that even the General Staff which had led the War of National Independence was placed a civilian control. Actually, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had been against any military interference in politics since the time of the Young Turk Period and this issue was one of the chief points of conflict between him and the Union and Progress Party.
The reorganization of education was to become one of the main elements for the secularization of culture. This change took place at the same time but without any opposition at all. The reform of headgear, set in motion by a law passed on November 25, 1925, was designed to change the appearance of the people as well as to give a sense of cultural symbol. In some areas of daily life, integration with the modern world and the reformist movement entailed the use of the western European calendar and methods of keeping time. On December 26th, 1925, the old lunar calendar and the old method of calculating time were changed and the day of rest moved from Friday to Sunday.
One of the most important cultural reforms was the change of the alphabet from Arabic to Latin letters. This drastic change not only facilitated the increase in literacy, but also served to strengthen the image of the secular nation-state. By changing the alphabet from the Arabic script of the Holy Quran to the Latin script, Turkish language and culture were emancipated from the influences of the Arabic script and Islamic culture.
In the meantime, the legal structure was secularized. Parallel to the abolition of the Ministry of Canon Law and Pious Foundations, the new Turkish civil code, which was an adaptation of the Swiss civil code, was put into effect on October 4, 1926. The new penal code, commercial code and the law of contracts also came into force the same day as meaningful parts of the legal code. The secularization of the Constitution and reforms such as the assumption of family names, and the abolition of religious titles, followed as a logical sequence. The general method of bringing about socio-cultural change in Turkey obviously required some political force by the victorious nationalist-revolutionaries. Also the integration of those reforms into a consistent ideology with the aid of organizational mechanisms was not neglected.
3. “Six Arrows”: An Attempt to Create a Consistent Ideology
The whole decade of the 1920’s was marked by reformist legal actions which were geared toward the reorganization of the total political and socio-cultural structure of the new Republic. In the early thirties, while the world was under the pressures of the “Great Recession” of 1929, the Turkish Revolution seemed to reach a plateau with a deadly threat of stagnation. Thus, Ataturk decided to establish a “loyal opposition” to give a political dynamism to the ongoing Turkish Revolution. Though the Party was formed through the backing of Ataturk and his friends,[] the support for it by the reactionaries became uncontrollable and turned out to be a real threat to the social-cultural and political reforms which were still in their period of infancy. As a result of this unexpected and unwanted development, the party was closed three months after its foundation, and Ataturk decided to revitalize the revolutionary spirit of the Republican People’s Party through ideological and educational programs.
Since the Kemalist ideology had not been articulated as a compact school of thought in the beginning, the only group which emerged with the function of mobilizing the intelligentsia (rather than the masses) was a number of writers organized around the political monthly Kadro.[] Kadro tried to develop an ideology for the Kemalist revolution. Their main orientation was later formulated as the “center-periphery relations” regarding the world economic system by thinkers such as Maurice Dobb, Immanuel Wallerstein, Arghiri Emmanuel and others. They believed that the main contradiction lay with the developed and underdeveloped nations rather than among classes in the same society. In addition to their quasi-Marxist approach to the world economic and political system, the group around Kadro tried to create an “enthusiasm” for the Turkish Revolution by bringing psychological and socio-psychological factors to the fore.[]
In the thirties, the world was witnessing the rise of fascism and the institutionalization of communism, and the newly emerged Turkish Republic was under the ideological impact of both political systems. Though Kadro was quasi-Marxist, the higher officials of the Republican People’s Party were rightist-oriented authoritarians. Among the writers of Kadro, there were Republican People’s Party deputies and some close friends of Ataturk. Thus Kadro’s power came from informal relations with Ataturk and Inonu, the two leaders of the Revolution. But the officials of the Party were more powerful than Kadro, because they were the official representatives of the establishment that had actually been created and controlled by Ataturk and Inonu.
Kadro was at first supported and then tolerated by both Ataturk and Inonu against the party organization just to create a challenge to the bureaucracy which was intermingled with the Party. When the issue boiled down to a real ideological controversy between the ranks of the Party and the writers of Kadro, however, Ataturk and Inonu favored the organizational setup and the group around Kadro was dissolved. The formulation of the Turkish revolution in ideological terms was in a sense “forced” by the above-noted internal and external factors.
The six principles, symbolized as the “six arrows” in the party flag, were pronounced as the ideology of “Kemalizm” in the Fourth Congress of the Republican People’s Party in 1935. The six principles, although stated at different times, formed an integrated whole since each principle had its own characteristics but became meaningful in conjunction with the others. Those principles which can be considered the pillars of the new State, were nationalism, republicanism, secularism, populism, etatism and reformism or revolutionism.
Nationalism.
Turkish nationalism had been the most retarded nationalist movement in the Ottoman Empire and had only emerged at the time of the Union and Progress Party, almost after the Empire had been dissolved. The champion of Turkish nationalism was Ziya Gokalp, a pioneer in sociology and the “ideologue” for the Union and Progress faction. In his way of expressing it, “Turkism could be strengthened by filling the patterns of western civilization with Turkish Culture.”[]
Gokalp had systematically advocated domination of Turkish culture with forms of western civilization rather than importing institutions as they had developed in the west. His sociological orientation, taking a nation as a political and cultural unity, helped him his advocacy of Turkism on “scientific” grounds. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s movement and Ziya Gokalp’s ideas had a close interaction in that Kemalism was affected by Ziya Gokalp in the formulation of nationalism as a principle, and Ziya Gokalp was affected by Kemalism which rejected any ambition beyond the borders of the new Turkey. There was a revision of the Pan-Turanism of Ziya Gokalp in the light of the Kemalist revolution. Ataturk knew only too well that the new Turkish Republic needed cultural traits for a new society because he had denied the Ottoman cultural heritage. Towards the end of his life, he placed special emphasis on Turkish language and history. He tried to reinforce Turkish nationalism by eliminating the cultural duality and emphasizing the historical roots of the Turks as a nation.
Ataturk’s nationalism was not based on race or religion. On the contrary, the main orientation was political and the “Turk” was defined as “anybody who lives within the borders of the Turkish Republic.” Thus, religious minorities such as Jews, Armenians and Greeks were given equal rights with the Muslim Turks, and more importantly, really treated equally (if not privileged) by the new Republican administration which denied the religious approach of the Ottoman bureaucracy. In this sense, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s nationalism was not segregative, but integrative.[]
Republicanism.
Since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had to put an end to the Ottoman dynasty which had blocked his path toward a contemporary political structure. Republicanism seemed to be the only solution for that time. Actually, nationalism and republicanism supplemented each other with the backing of populism and secularism. The Empire was non-existent, the religious-political head and symbol of that Empire had lost his functions and the new society did not need a Sultan-Caliph under whom the Muslim communities would be integrated.[] Republicanism was also instrumental in laying the necessary theoretical foundations for the establishment of democracy in the future. There is no doubt that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk meant the achievement of a democratic structure for the future, as he openly stated that a republican regime means the administration of the State through a democratic system. “We established the Republic, and now as it reaches its tenth year of age, all the necessary conditions for a democracy ought to be realized one by one when the time comes.”[] The principle of republicanism gained some social content when coupled with populism, another one of the “six arrows,” as it was the functional idea for the foundation of a nation-state, hand in hand with nationalism.
Secularism.
Secularism was the political, legal and socio-cultural principle which was complementary to the concept of a modern sate. Like all the principles of Kemalism, it had developed as a reaction to the Ottoman system. It meant the separation of religion from legal, educational and cultural life. Almost all the important reforms were based on this principle: the unification of education, the adoption of the new civil code, the abolition of the Caliphate, and other changes.
Because of the influence of secularism on all Kemalist reforms, the “evolutionary cadres of the new republic were accused of being anti-religious. The new revolutionaries wanted to change the six hundred year old Islamic traditions that had affected the social, cultural and political spheres of the Ottoman Empire. Fierce opposition was expected and the religious leaders and the revolutionaries became rival parties in terms of status and power in the society.
As the traditional forces in the Ottoman Empire allied with religious functionaries against any kind of effort towards a modern state, secularism was also a means of eliminating traditional obstacles to modernization. Far from being anti-religious in principle, by separating religion from other facets, secularism save Islam from being crushed by the Kemalist reformation in the reorganization process of Turkish society.
Although Mustafa Kemal had used religion and religious leaders at times, he apparently held no strong belief himself. “... Ataturk and his colleagues have not instituted anti-religious measures of sentiments, as have dictatorships of Russia and Germany. While they have not displayed anti-religious attitudes, it is probably correct to say that they have no love for hidebound ecclesiastics and ecclesiasticism.”[] Ataturk could not afford to sacrifice religion in his role as a political reformer. The following observation sums up the Kemalist behavior on this subject: “... It is plain that one cannot categorically assert either that the government (of the new Republic) is favorable or that it is hostile to Islam. The truth of the matter seems to be that it is distinctly opportunistic in its attitude: that it is favorable to whatever in Islam is consistent with the republican ideals, relentlessly opposed to anything which might endanger Kemalist success, and, for the rest, more or less neutral.”[]
It should also be remembered that secularism was used as a theoretical base for the transfer of political power from the religious-traditional post of the Sultan-Caliph to the republican post of the President.
Populism.
Populism was only a social approach geared to eliminate cultural dualism, but also a political principle which was to deny class differentiation. The Party program read as follows on this subject:
We consider the individuals who accept an absolute equality before law, and who recognize no privileges for any individual, family, class or community, to be of the people and for the people (populist),
It is one of our main principles to consider the people of the Turkish Republic, not as composed of different classes, but as a community divided into various professions according to the requirements of the division of labor for the individual and the social life of the Turkish people....
The aims of our Party, with this principle, are to secure social order and solidarity instead of class conflict, and to establish harmony of interest. The benefits are to be proportionate to the aptitude and to the amount of work.[]
The social policy of the new republic was rather a “solidarist” one, and aligned specifically neither with capitalism nor socialism. Populism in this sense was not only a symbol for social policy but also a guide to economic activities. In fact, Ataturk identified populism with the national economic policy.[]
All the reforms were the products of the intelligentsia or the ruling class in the young republic as there was no other social force in existence. Regarded as such, populism was also an elitist approach to the society and etatism, which was based on populism as well as nationalism, resulted in the development of capitalism.
Etatism.
Etatism was a means of building a national economy based on private enterprise, through the protection and support of the state, and in some instances, its direct intervention in the form of “State Economic Enterprises.”
As a Kemalist principle, etatism was instrumental in the creation of an independent economy rather than a state-controlled one. A Communist economy was never a goal of Kemalism. Etatism was a principle necessary to complete the economic part of the socio-political transformation of the Ottoman society into a modern state. It accelerated the economic processes that the West had experienced during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[]
It was stated that ... “the theory of solidarism, which developed in nineteenth-century Europe as a reaction to both classical liberalism and Marxism, had a profound impact on the Kemalist principle of populism. but because the theory of solidarism was not an adequately developed social theory, it did not provide the necessary guidance for socio-economic transformation.”[] Etatism was the principle which filled this gap in the Turkish transformation.
Reformism (Revolutionism).
Reformism (revolutionism) also lent its nature to the other five principles. It had two fundamental meanings: 1) the reforms which had been achieved through the revolutionary cadres of the new republic should be preserved; 2) the spirit of reformism (revolutionism) should dominate the future of Turkish society. Mustafa Kemal was a realistic and pragmatic leader. He knew only too well that drastic changes and reforms, achieved in such a short period of time, would need a longer period for assimilation. Reformism (revolutionism) stated as the sixth principle would become the revolutionary spirit that should continue through time to aid this absorption. He also believed that the re-structuring of society could be achieved through new reforms to be added to the ones already introduced. Perhaps his very strong reliance on Turkish youth as a major force to carry on with his reforms sprang room this belief. It was an indispensable principle for Kemalism, which in itself was a reaction to the old structure, and could be erased overnight. Thus, reformism (revolutionism) can be viewed as the mainspring of the new cultural synthesis sought for the young Republic.
4. Organizational Mechanisms for the Ideological Re-orientation of the Society
What Mustafa Kemal had sought in the realm of culture for the new state could be expressed as an “induced acculturation” in social anthropological terms: all this political, social, educational and cultural reforms were geared to introducing a contemporary western culture into a traditional Islamic Turkish society. Since he was deprived of the backing of any strong emergent class (such as the bourgeoisie in the French Revolution or the party of the proletariat in the Russian Revolution), he had to build up a sound organizational structure through which he could manage the society. He also lacked any organizational support as he had already broken his ties with the Party of Union and Progress. Thus, he had to start from the grass-roots level.
The leverage points were the “Defense of Rights” organizations which had started after the invasion of Anatolia by the Greeks, urged on by the victorious powers of the First World War. The merger of those local resistance organizations under the name of “The Association for the Defense of Rights of Anatolia and Rumelia (Thrace)” was realized in the Sivas Congress on September 7, 1919, and Mustafa Kemal was elected as the permanent chairman of the steering committee.
When the Grand National Assembly was inaugurated on April 23, 1920, after the Ottoman Parliament was dissolved by the occupying powers, Mustafa Kemal, being the elected chairman of the assembly, started to control the whole governmental apparatus.
Although such a legitimate source of power and the control of the channels of communication seem sufficient for political and military domination over a society, it is evident that the acculturation process needed some additional and more subtle mechanism. Mustafa Kemal made use of three such mechanisms: the Republican Party, “the People’s Houses” (Halkevleri) and two autonomous research associations, the Turkish History Society and the Turkish Language Society. later he added a fourth one, the universities.
The Party
The formation of a Party was a necessary step for Mustafa Kemal, as he was trying to establish a modern state which could not possibly function without such a political organization. Actually, a party-like group called the “Association for the Defense of Rights of Anatolia and Rumelia” was formed in the first Grand National Assembly out of political necessity. Mustafa Kemal needed a formal organization to exert his revolutionary control over the Assembly, which was composed of various groups from Istanbul and from Anatolia. The second goal for the formation of such a “group” was to start building a new constitutional structure for the new state.[]
After the elections were held for the Second National Assembly, the Association for the Defense of Rights was changed into the Republican People’s Party on September 9, 1923. Mustafa Kemal had declared nine principles under the heading of the “Program of Populism” five months previously, in order to present a coherent program to the public prior to the elections. Among those principles were national sovereignty, the irrevocable character of the abolition of the Sultanate, the abolition of some taxes, and the restructuring of the legal system according to secular principles.
Ataturk planned to use the Republican Party for two different purposes at two different levels. First, he made use of it as an instrument for his legitimate power, based on national representation. Secondly, the party became a sort of “school for the education of the Turkish people.” Thus, the party was different from classical political parties, in the sense that it was the channel “from the top to the bottom” of the social order regarding new reforms and also a mechanism of “popular representation.” Not only was the formulation of the “Kemalist ideology” realized within the party, but also mass education concerning a new culture and a new political structure was performed through the party organization.
The People’s Houses
Since the Party was mostly of a political nature, the acculturation process required widespread dissemination of new cultural values which needed some additional mechanisms. Such necessity cannot be overemphasized in the face of the inert character of the rural masses conditioned for centuries by the religious structure of the political system.
The people’s houses were formed by the Republican People’s Party as an “institution to provide the national organization of the society in the area of culture.”[] “Strengthening the national conscience” was among the stated aims of the people’s houses.[] The people’s houses had nine branches of activity which sought to cover all the cultural life of the society: 1) Language and literature, 2) Fine Arts, 3) Libraries and Publications, 8) Rural Development (Koyculuk), 9) History and Museums.[]
As can be seen clearly from the above noted divisions, the people’s houses were designed to “mobilize people” according to the new cultural aims as well as to launch a “community development” program on a national scale. Especially, activities such as “social assistance” and “rural development” (koyculuk) at a national level allow one to assert that the people’s houses were the first attempts at “community development” which later became universal through the programs of the United Nations. It should also be noted that a nation-wide education program was started through the same organizational setup. Later on, such educational activities were followed by a new educational experience based on “learning through doing! in the villages, under the name of “village institutes.”
People’s houses and later on, village institutes, became places also wherein the folklore of the local communities were studied and developed by works of art and socio-cultural monographs. The cultural and ideological activities of the people’s houses and people’s rooms (small branches of the people’s houses) were under the watchful eye of the Republican People’s Party. Though everybody could participate in the activities, only party members could be elected to administrative posts.
In 1945, when their activities peaked, the number of people’s houses reached four hundred thirty-five: and the number of people’s rooms, two thousand seven hundred eighteen. The figures for their activities were really impressive in terms of the number of participants. The activities of 1940 were reported as more than five thousand conferences, two thousand theater performances, one thousand two hundred concerts (classical music), two thousand film showings, about two thousand “family entertainments,” some two thousand villages, more than forty-thousand cases of social assistance, one hundred and fifty exhibitions of fine arts, four hundred other exhibitions, various public education courses attended by 40,000 persons and more than two million readers of four hundred thousand books in public libraries.
The Turkish History Society and the Turkish Language Society
It was early understood by the party leaders that the ideology of Kemalism should be supported through scientific research on Turkish nationalism. The roots of Turkish culture were to be brought to the fore from the darkness of the past where they had been overshadowed since the seventh century by the magnificent Islamic culture. Thus studies on Turkish history and on Turkish language were given special emphasis by the revolutionary cadres of the new Republic, and personally by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk himself. Efforts in both historical and philological research were especially geared to freeing the new society from an Ottoman cultural heritage which had imposed Arabic and even Persian cultures on the people of Anatolia.
Historical research went for back even to the time of the Hittites in Asia Minor and the Turkic peoples of Central Asia.
It was also contended that a new culture requires a new language. After the reform of the alphabet in 1928, the studies were started to “purify” the Turkish language from Arabic and Persian. Actually it was an effort to abandon the cosmopolitan language of the Ottomans, which had been spoken and written mostly by a “palace culture”, and to substitute the everyday language of the “people” of the Turkish Republic. Coupled with the legal alphabet reform, the reform of the Turkish Language became not only a cultural, but also a political, symbol of the struggle of Turkish nationalism against Ottoman-style culture.
Ataturk was a keen enough revolutionary to realize the shortcomings of imposing new ideas by force. He thus formed two independent and autonomous organizations to study Turkish history and Turkish Language on April 10, 1931 and July 12, 1932 respectively. The cultural mobilization went forward methodically with the inauguration of the first “people’s house” on February 19, 1932 and the university reform, on November 18, 1933. While the new ideology was formulated within the Party and by the Societies of Turkish History and Turkish Language, the People’s Houses were used as the channels through which this ideology was transferred to the masses.
The ultimate aim was to create an original and independent culture for the Turkish Republic. Mustafa Kemal and his followers sought to amalgamate the Western, Islamic and Turkish civilizations by imposing Western models upon traditional Islamic culture to create the new Turkish civilization.
The Role of the Universities
The higher educational institutions have always been on the progressive side in Turkey since 1863, the date when the first university in the modern sense opened. As soon as it started to train students along modern secular lines, the reactionary religious people successfully intervened and forced the closing of the first Dar-ul-Funun (the house of sciences). Thereafter, the professors were exiled. It was reopened during the oppressive reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II in order to be used as a source of support for the throne.
With the proclamation of the Republic, Istanbul University which had already been reformed in 1919, was given new facilities and in 1924 legally reorganized along the lines of a modern institution. On that date, the famous pedagogue, Ismayil Hakki Baltacioglu was appointed President.
Nevertheless, the expected dynamic support from revolutionary cadres of the new Republic was not immediately available in the University community, thus making it dysfunctional for the revolution in the early years of the Republic. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, being a great believer in a secular, positive approach to the arts and sciences, supported Istanbul University and established a new one in Ankara.
Istanbul University, housed in a new structure, reopened on November 18, 1933. The 1930’s were the years of the rise of National-Socialists in Germany. Thus many university professors, seeking asylum from Hitler’s regime, came upon Ataturk’s invitation and helped contribute to the development of scientific knowledge in the areas of law, finance, sociology, and medicine. In 1936 the Faculty of Language, History and Geography was opened in Ankara. Thereafter the scientific contribution to the cultural revival of the young Republic was also carried out there. The universities, in their role as autonomous organizations of research and teaching, developed the social sciences and humanities in Turkey placing Turkish cultural identity on a sound basis. Such an achievement was brought abut through the autonomous structure of the universities which is still protected carefully by the academic community against pressures to place them under political control. Such a change would certainly hinder scientific objectivity. While here we have singled out two institutions, such as the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul and the State Conservatory in Ankara, contributed their share to the development of Turkish art and culture.
5. Sociological Appraisal
Having seen that the revolution and the subsequent reforms were realized through the systematic efforts of a group of the ruling elite of the Ottoman Empire, we realize that Ataturk was not the leader of a rising socio-economic class but rather the leader of a statist-elitist group formed by the civilian and military bureaucracy of the Empire who had worked out an alliance with some of the landowners during the War of Independence.
As the new elite was a product of the Ottoman system, class development in the Republic was hindered. Because of this historical and sociological fact, the Turkish Revolution produced a political change at its outset.[] Deprived of the support of a rising class in society, Ataturk was hindered in his goals and had to introduce socio-economic and cultural changes through his political power.
The reforms were designed to create a western-type society in the absence of a powerful capitalist class to support it, and thus, in a sense, the reforms were designed to create such a class. An alliance between the ruling elite and the weak intermediary classes of landowners and entrepreneurial groups was instigated by the revolutionary cadres. This strategy resulted in the cooperation between the bureaucracy of the Republic and the local notables such as landowners, tradesmen and other sections of the hereditary intermediary classes of the Ottomans.[]
Legal, educational, and cultural reforms, in addition to political ones, were used as a means of accelerating socio-economic and cultural progress along the lines the western world had followed a century before. Thus, in sociological terms, Ataturk’s reforms were not the natural result of socio-economic and cultural changes, but ideological positions imposed to induce such changes. In other words, the Turkish Revolution is an example of infrastructural changes through superstructural means. By using the power of the State, Ataturk created a new socio-economic and cultural order. however, this movement was so alien to the existing socio-economic structure of the Ottomans that it did not even have philosophers, thinkers and writers.[] Ziya Gokalp, the only theoretician of the Party of Union and Progress, was limited in his influence, as his approach to the revolution was too general to have a deep impact on the Republic.
There is no doubt that Ataturk’s revolution was an anti-imperialist one, but it had fought with the very weapons developed by the West. Westernization became the response to the imperialism of the West. As the reforms had to achieve rapid westernization, the principles of republicanism, nationalism, populism, secularism, etatism, and reformism (revolutionism) were chosen as the accelerators in order to attain the socio-economic characteristics of western countries in one tenth of the time actually taken by Europe.
Cool, but all i know abt turkish history after the world war is that there were reparations after the WW1 then revolution, Ataturk came around and he defeated a british army (the best thing any1n cud do at that time was dun by Ataturk... screwing the british) and changed the treaty of trianon or wateva it was called. Temme if i am right?
