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Pulat Tacar

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Kemalism still has an important role to play in Turkey

Published: February 9 2011 00:12 | Last updated: February 9 2011 00:12

From Prof Emeritus Feroz Ahmad.

Sir, I read with interest Andrew Duff’s article “EU and Turkey avoid last ditch Cypriot talks” (FT.com, January 20). Much of the article was informative; but Mr Duff showed a lack of understanding about Turkey today when he talked of “Turkey’s exaggerated adherence to its state ideology of Kemalism”.

Mustafa Kemal never created a state ideology because he argued that ideologies become fossilised. He didn’t simply labour “to modernise Turkey along western lines”, he launched a determined struggle against the patriarchal society the new republic inherited from the Ottomans. In that society knowledge was based on myth and belief, truth was religious, government was dynastic and social relations were vertical, while social stratification was based on family, clan or sect.

The Kemalists introduced rational knowledge, truth based on science, a party-led government, social relations that were horizontal, and a society based on class.

Turkey is only 87 years old and therefore young by the standards of “old Europe”. The reforms of the 1920s and 1930s have still to be protected from attempts to restore patriarchal values, especially the rights gained by women. There is also the question of education and scientific thought; for example, in recent years the idea of evolution has been challenged by creationists in schools and institutions of science.

Mr Duff does not seem to understand what is happening in Turkey today and that is why Kemalists are alarmed.

Feroz Ahmad,

Professor Emeritus of History,

University of Massachusetts,

Boston, MA, US

Copyright The Financial Times Limited

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