Tag: Ataturk

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic and itsfirst President, stands as a towering figure of the 20th Century. Among the great leadersof history, few have achieved so much in so short period, transformed the life of a nationas decisively, and given such profound inspiration to the world at large. The Greatest Leader of ALL Time: ATATURK Soldier, Diplomat, Statesman, Orator, Teacher, Scholar, Genius Proactive Ataturk Community

ATATURK SOCIETIES OF USA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM STRONGLY OPPOSE

ATATURK SOCIETIES OF USA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM STRONGLY OPPOSE

THE TURKISH RULING PARTY’S DECLARED INTENTION
TO CHANGE “TURKEY’S FOUNDING PRINCIPLES” PROTECTED BY THE CURRENT CONSTITUTION

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, PUBLICLY STATED its intention to change the Turkish Constitution right after the General Elections, scheduled for June 12, 2011. Erdogan is asking voters to enable him to come back to the Turkish Parliament with at least 367 deputies so that he can CHANGE THE TURKISH CONSTITUTION UNILATERALLY.

Erdogan is basing his arguments for a “new constitution” on his party’s desire to have a “more democratic and civil” constitution. This is a disguise of his real intention to change “THE FOUNDING PRINCIPLES OF TURKEY”, explained in the PREAMBLE and enshrined in the FIRST FOUR articles of the CURRENT CONSTITUTION.

The letter and the spirit of the “preamble” and the “irrevocable first four articles” of the current Constitution reflect Ataturk’s philosophy and vision of a “PRO-WESTERN, MODERN, SECULAR, and DEMOCRATIC TURKEY, governed by the RULE OF LAW, EQUALITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE, its NATIONAL UNITY AND INTERESTS DEFENDED. These founding principles have been protected throughout several amendments of the Constitution since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923.

The AKP wants to Change Ataturk’s Philosophy and Vision

Since coming to power in 2002, the “Islamist AKP” has gradually but increasingly moved away from the Republic’s founding principles and national identity. Numerous foreign observers as well as many Turks are convinced that the AKP is trying to transform Turkey into an Iranian-style Islamic state. Despite its occasional official denials, the AKP’s actions and media statements demonstrate its clear intentions. Most recently, on May 10, 2011, a prominent AKP leader and a State Minister told the Turkish Press openly that “the only irrevocable article in the Turkish Constitution was Article 1, that Turkey was a ‘Republic’. All other articles, he said, could be (and will be !”) changed” once AKP has enough number of deputies in the Parliament. Today, even with less than 367 deputies, the AKP firmly controls the country’s legislative and executive branches and already took control of the judiciary by appointing AKP-sympathetic prosecutors and judges. Security forces are transformed into an oppression machine against opponents and protesters. Academia is silenced by replacing university presidents.

TURKEY’S PRO-WESTERN identity and image have already been tarnished. Initially, the AKP renounced its Islamic heritage and began working to secure European Union(EU)-membership, and turn Turkey into an even more liberal and pro-Western state. However, more than eight years later, the AKP seems anything but pro-Western, liberal and democratic ! It has returned firmly to its Islamist roots. Erdogan has openly played the “Islamist card” in order to boost himself and his political party, and establish greater dominance in the “Islamic world”. Under the AKP rule, liberal political trends have quickly disappeared and EU accession talks have stalled. In foreign policy, relations with the West and Israel have deteriorated. President Gul and Erdogan spent more time visiting Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Syria and Egypt, and hosted a series of anti-Western leaders including Sudan’s president Al-Bashir when the Hague International tribunal was accusing Al-Bashir committing atrocities in Darfur. Al-Bashir, who received a warm welcome from Erdogan, was defending the implementation of Sheria Law in resolving the Darfur conflict. Turkey’s foreign policy has shifted decidedly towards the East and promoted solidarity with Islamist, anti-Western regimes.

SECULARISM has been denied and ignored… Erdogan’s famous quote “one can not be a Moslem and secular at the same time” best explains his political philosophy and intentions…Under the AKP rule, religiosity in Turkey has increased markedly. The government began to hire top bureaucrats from an exclusive pool of religious candidates and the percentage of women in executive positions in government, dropped sharply. Religious observance has become a necessity for those seeking government appointments or lucrative state contracts. Bureaucrats in Ankara now feel compelled to attend Friday prayers lest they be by passed for promotions. Turkey today has over 85,000 active mosques, one for every 350 citizens, the highest per capita in the world, compared to one hospital for every 60,000 citizens, with 90,000 imams, more imams than doctors or teachers. It has opened up thousands of madrasa-like Imam-Hatip schools and about four thousand more official, state-run Qur’an courses. Spending by the government’s Directorate of Religious Affairs has grown five fold from 553 trillion Turkish liras in 2002 to 2.7 quadrillion Turkish liras (about US$325 million), during the first four years of the AKP government. The Directorate has a larger budget than 8 other ministries combined. The objective is to train people for every position in the public service in the country. The AKP has also fought very hard, though unsuccessfully, to lift the ban on “head scarves” in schools and government offices.
Erdogan’s desire to change the Constitution unilaterally and his disrespect for secularism may lead to a turnaround in Turkey’s founding principles, and put the country under governance by Islamic Sheria Law.

DEMOCRACY and FREEDOMS have been severely restricted. The mysterious Ergenekon case has become the largest and most controversial judicial investigation in recent Turkish history. Hundreds of people, mostly opponents of AKP and Erdogan, including the high-ranking Army officers, famous journalists, writers, artists, university professors, and heads of modern, secular civil societies have been detained, mostly in multiple simultaneous dawn raids by members of the Counterterrorism Department of the Turkish National Police (TNP). They are tried under detention that has been going on for more than three years without any sign of conclusion. None of the detainees has been convicted, yet.

At the same time, severe restrictions have been put on “freedom of speech” and “freedom of press”. On April 2010, Turkey’s Justice Minister said that police intelligence listens to the private conversations of 70,000 people; almost one in every 1,000 Turks live in police scrutiny today. Turkey also ranks at the bottom of the list in Western Europe with regard to the “freedom of press”. The President of Turkish Journalists Union (TGS) complained that there are thousands of cases filed against journalists, more than hundred filed by Erdogan alone. Currently about 100 Turkish journalists are in jail. One of them was arrested even before the book was published, for authoring a book that investigates the grip on Turkish politics of a religious group. The police seized and burned the unpublished book, while imposing a ban on its internet accessibility. Working closely with the PM’s office, the Turkish Telecom and Communication Ministry (TIB) put thousands of wire tabs on political rivals and introduced censorship on “Google” and “YouTube” many times. TIB recently announced its intention to impose, more restrictions on internet. The great majority of the independent media, critical of the government, were forced through unclear legal reasons to sell their businesses, daily newspapers and TV stations to AKP supporters. As a result, the share of Turkish media held by religious, pro-AKP groups rose from about 20 to over 65 percent, at present. In these sale transactions, large credits were granted to AKP supporters from state-owned banks. Furthermore, the Public Procurement Law was amended several times and thresholds for tenders reduced steadily to avoid competitive bidding and allow sales to AKP supporters.

We oppose to any change in Turkey’s “Founding Principles and Vision”

We, the members of the Ataturk Societies of USA and the United Kingdom, STRONGLY OPPOSE AKP’s plan to change the constitution and remove the “founding principles of Turkey” from its text. Even with these principles in place in current Constitution, the AKP has moved ahead with its Islamist agenda and already tarnished Turkey’s pro-Western, modern, secular and democratic identity and image. With the removal of Ataturk’s philosophy and vision from the Constitution, it would be harder, if not impossible, to prevent Turkey’s slide into an anti-Western, anti-Democratic, and anti-Secular Islamist state.*

References:
1. Turkish Constitutional Court Documents. (Ankara ) May 27, 2011;
2. “Degismez Maddeler Degisebilir !” Bulent Arinc, Radikal (Istanbul) May 10, 2011
3. “The Islamists Show Their Hand” and “Abandoning Ataturk”, Soner Cagaptay,
Newsweek, Feb.14, 2009 and Newsweek, Sept. 19, 2009
4. “Sayilarla Kendine Gelmek…” Can Dundar, Milliyet (Istanbul), June 22, 2007
5. “Turkey’s Turning Point”, Michael Rubin, Apr. 14, 2008
6. “Ergenekon – Between Fact or Fantasy”, Gareth H. Jenkins, Silk Road Papers, Aug.2009
7. “Corruption in Public Procurement – Turkey “Global Integrity Report, 2008

June 9, 2011
New Atatürk memorabilia on display at Istanbul’s Rahmi M. Koç Museum

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

New Atatürk memorabilia on display at Istanbul’s Rahmi M. Koç Museum

The Rahmi M. Koç Museum in Istanbul has added new displays to its section featuring objects related to the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

The addition was made to coincide with the May 19 Youth and Sports Day, which marks the date in 1919 when Atatürk launched the struggle for national independence.

As well as photos that have never before been revealed and March 1923 and February 1927 issues of TIME magazine featuring Atatürk on the cover, objects from Atatürk’s office, his personal belongings and clothing are among the new objects added to the section.

Among the never-seen-before photos of Atatürk, there are ones showing him working on the Yürüyen Köşk in Istanbul’s Yalova district and enjoying special moments drinking tea with his friends. There is also a carpet on which Atatürk is depicted thinking in Çanakkale’s Kocatepe.

Other new objects in the section include a souvenir Atatürk moneybox, cigarettes specially produced for state officials and figures symbolizing the War of the Independence that adorned desks in state departments until the 1970s.

via New Atatürk memorabilia on display at Istanbul’s Rahmi M. Koç Museum – Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review.

May 20, 2011
Turkey celebrates another May 19 with fascistic overtones

19 May 2011, Thursday / E. BARIŞ ALTINTAŞ , İSTANBUL

“One language, one flag, one motherland,” reads a choreographed formation of Kuleli military cadets who performed for May 19 Youth and Sports Day ceremonies.

Thursday was May 19, the anniversary of the beginning of the War of Independence, marked as the day Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk landed in Samsun in 1919, and militarism was at the forefront once again on this day, celebrated in Turkey as Atatürk Commemoration and Youth and Sports Day.

High school students, who had been practicing for days, paraded in perfect order in military formations in stadiums across Turkey and performed athletic routines. Troops also paraded, with generals attending the ceremonies in big cities alongside of politicians. Many writers believe that the images are unworthy of a democratic nation, noting that national days are celebrated in this fashion only in currently or previously communist countries that have not fully democratized such as China, Cuba or Russia. “Why are we still holding fascist-looking ceremonies on May 19?” asked Mümtaz’er Türköne, a columnist for the Zaman daily, in his column on Thursday.

“This must be the definition of dogmatism. Repeating the same thing every year without ever questioning it, without ever reflecting on its real meaning, doing the same thing every year religiously as a pair of oxen plowing the field would. Our May 19 celebrations were taken from the fascist Italy of 1932. Why aren’t we even thinking of changing how we do this?”

He says young people putting on uncomplicated gymnastics performances on fields in stadiums was introduced in 1932, when a delegation led by Prime Minister İsmet İnönü visited Moscow and Rome, where they were impressed by the ways in which Mussolini’s Italy and Stalin’s Russia raised their youth.

Journalist Mehmet Altan says that the military parades on national days are usually associated with dictatorial regimes. Since the regime of Turkey was set up by the military, which sees itself as the protector and custodian of the regime, “There is a constant glorification of the military.” He points to phrases in Turkish, such as “Every Turk is born a soldier,” that to

He also noted that the ways national days have been celebrated haven’t changed, not in the slightest, from the ways they were celebrated in the first decade of the republic. For this to change, Altan said, political parties should make an effort to change the mentality. “The regime is not democratic, but there are no efforts to transform it into a democracy because the military-politics relationship has turned into a field for profit. The General Staff cannot be brought under the supervision of the National Defense Ministry. Those who actually propose this are only doing so in return for political gains.”

Tansel Parlak, from the Young Civilians, a civil society group that promotes de-militarization of politics, said Turkey should start celebrating May 19 in a more civilian manner.

“For this mentality to change, civil society organizations and political parties should speak up. Firstly, people who are delivering speeches in May 19 ceremonies should think of this themselves. Most probably, they attended those ceremonies as young people. Did they ever listen to politicians when they were stuffed into stadiums? Somebody should bravely make this point, although he might become the target of unjust criticism, such as accusations of not wanting to celebrate May 19 or commemorate Atatürk at all. Turkey is one of the world’s biggest economies — it is negotiating for EU membership. Celebrations done like ours can be seen in North Korea and China. Turkey should make up its mind — is it going to go on with this mentality, or will it choose to be more democratic?”

On May 19, 1919, Atatürk, who would become modern Turkey’s first president, landed on the main peninsula of Turkey lead the liberation effort. In early 1920, Atatürk convened the first Turkish Grand National Assembly (Parliament) in Ankara and by 1922 all of Anatolia was freed from foreign rule. The independent Republic of Turkey was declared a year later. During the course of his term as president, Atatürk himself proclaimed May 19 “Youth and Sports Day.” In the aftermath of Atatürk’s monumental legacy, the day serves to honor the country’s founder as well.

via Zaman

May 20, 2011
Turkey has been maligned by European public opinion – thanks to Greeks and the Liberal Party

Istanbul's Grand Bazaar (Photo: Getty)

by Ed West

I’ve been reading Norman Stone’s excellent Turkey: A Short History. It’s worth looking at because in all the debate about Turkey, Europe and its potential membership of the EU, there’s an underling historical hostility, and Stone provides an alternative narrative. So while Turkish atrocities down the years are well known, they were often the victims, too, and in many parts of south-east Europe Muslims were victims of a borderline genocide.

Stone argues that the Turks have been much maligned in Europe, largely because of a casual anti-Turkishness started by well-placed Greeks in 19th-century London. These Greeks “were good at playing London, certainly much better than the Turks; they had a – the – Indo-European language, had shipping money, Masonic connections and, with marriages often enough in surprisingly high places, the right invitations. They were especially good at cultivating the Liberal Party.”

A century and a half of Greco-Turkish violence began in 1770 when Catherine the Great sent Russian officers to Morea, as the Peloponnese was known at the time, under the banner of Orthodox Christianity. In 1828 a clergyman proclaimed another rising, and organised a gruesome massacre of Muslims, killing the entire Muslim population of Corinth, including women and children, and even though they had agreed to leave with safe-passage organised by the British.

The Turks in retribution hanged the Patriarch and 20 other prominent Greeks, and then massacred the inhabitants of the wrong island, Chios rather than Samos. But despite this the Turks were bound to lose the PR battle: Europe, especially Germany, was in awe to Ancient Greece, and it was easy to take sides even when the story was more complicated. The Greeks were egged on by western romantics, such as George Gordon, Lord Byron, then living in the Adriatic in his mid-30s and “running out of inspiration and money”. Byron, according to Stone, was a bit of a prat, but was nevertheless a dashing figure and started a long process “by which western writers turn up in odd places to stand on barricades and say no pasaran”.

Being anti-Turkish became fashionable in the West, even though “when it came to atrocities, the Greeks gave as good as they got. Somehow, then and later, the Muslim victims were forgotten, and the Greeks were practised hands at image-management, whereas the Turks were not.”

Turkey made great progress in the mid 19th century, but it all unravelled after the panic of 1873, which sent the world economy into depression. There was an uprising in Herzegovina against a crackdown on tobacco-smuggling (still a major industry today – read the brilliant McMafia), followed by trouble in Bulgaria. Bulgaria was filled with refugees from Russian wars, Tatars and Circassians, as well as the native Muslims, called Pomaks, who had lived there for centuries and had good relations with their neighbours. Relations between Circassians and Bulgarian Christians, on the other hand, were tense, and resulted in a massacre of the latter.

This became a cause in the West, and Liberal leader William Gladstone went up and down Britain whipping up outrage, and writing a bestseller,Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. Yet the Bulgarians were no innocents, and the British ambassador in Constantinople, Austen Henry Layard, told the foreign secretary that Gladstone was lying. As Stone says: “A curious collection of would-be high-minded clergymen, professors of English history who did not know anything substantial about the area, seem to have acquired a caricature vision of the Turks, lolling around in harems, smoking hashish and ravishing virgins.”

The worst violence was yet to come. In 1897 there was an uprising in Crete, still part of the empire, which eventually the Greeks won, but history ignores the unfortunate fact that Crete was one third Muslim. “Within a decade, Crete was in effect free, and what the world now knows as ‘ethnic cleansing’ went ahead – the Muslims cruelly pushed out, with a great deal of killing. If, two generations later, the Turks resisted very strongly over Cyprus, where there was a comparable situation, this needs to be put in context.”

Most controversially, Stone argues that if the mass murder of Armenians in World War One was genocide, then “it could legitimately be extended to cover the fates of the millions of Muslims driven from the Balkans or the Caucasus as the Ottoman Empire receded”.

The abiding hatred between Greeks and Turks culminated with the burning down of Smyrna, the transfer of a million and a half people in 1922 and, finally in 1955, the final pogrom that ended two and a half millennia of Greek life there.

Greek culture, that is, for the Turks themselves are largely descended from Greeks, and Stone goes as far as to say they are the real heirs to Byzantium. “Byzantium had really been destroyed by the Italians, not the Turks who, if anything, had saved it. Ancient Greece had been destroyed by Celts, after Alexander, and then she had been destroyed all over again by Slavs in the eight century. She had been re-hellenized by the Byzantines, and Greek nationalists could never agree as to whether they were Hellenes or – clerically – Byzantines.”

But, Stone says, the tragedy of Greco-Turkish hatred should not overshadow the achievements of the Turkish Republic, and especially its founder, Mustafa Kemal. The Turkish worship of Atatürk is strange to foreigners, but he was certainly one of the great men of the 20th century, and the achievements of secular Turkey in contrast to the failings of the rest of the Middle East are starting. And despite Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey remains “the only country between Athens and Singapore where, judging by the refugees, people actually wanted to live”.

Turkey’s success is illustrated by this one fact. Although there are five times as many Arab as Turkish speakers, some 11,000 books are translated into Turkish every year; just 300 into Arabic.

Ed West is a journalist and social commentator who specialises in politics, religion and low culture. He is @edwestonline on Twitter.

blogs.telegraph.co.uk, April 17th, 2011

April 18, 2011
This Spring won’t breed any more Turkeys

The Times (UK), 5 April 2011, p. 1-19

Norman Stone *

A slow, draconian process of modernisation and a hostile attitude to Islam is no model for the Arab world

Odd to think, but we are at the 100th anniversary of an event involving Libya that precipitated a world war. In October 1911, the Italians invaded the Turkish possession; the defeat of the weakened Turks encouraged the Balkan nations to attack the last outposts of the Ottoman Empire in Europe, ultimately ending in the outbreak of the First World War.

Ten years down the line, Kemal Atatürk expelled the last occupying forces that were trying to divide up what was left of defeated Turkey, removed the Sultan and, in 1923, established the Republic of Turkey.

Atatürk said explicitly that Turkey had to modernise. And, with leaps and lags, Turkey has largely done so.

Democracy is well established and much of its economy has reached the levels of Mediterranean Europe, though there are large patches of backwardness in the southeast. Such is its success that outsiders now talk of the « Turkish model » as the future for Egypt and the rest of the Arab world.

This is a far-fetched notion. Turkey has been westernising, autonomously, for nearly two centuries. But it did so, Western advocates should note, in authoritarian fashion.

Until the 1950s, there was a single-party regime, though there were limits to the repression. (True, they put their leading poet, Nâzim Hikmet, into prison, but he did provoke it, going down to the docks to preach communism to the Navy, even after his cousin, the Interior Minister, told him privately that they would have to arrest him. He then faced an absurdly long spell in prison, where he was subjected to a most cruel punishment: his former wife was allowed to come for the weekend.) Democracy eventually did come about, but has only really worked in tandem with the steady economic progress which has occurred since the last serious military coup, in 1980. Its progress exactly matches Francis Fukuyama’s argument that you can afford democracy when your GDP per head reaches a level of around $7,500.

Nowadays there are more than 80 million Egyptians, mostly crowded into the Nile Delta and Cairo, and there is a gigantic problem of youth unemployment throughout the Arab world. Even the strongest military regime would struggle to do more than keep order and hope vaguely that economic progress will come about.

So what else does the Turkish model require? The most important element is state control of religion, to curb the wild men, of whom Islam generally produces a great deal too many. Religion in Turkey is strictly overseen by a central office, which even dictates the shape of mosques. Whether this would go down well in the Arab world is questionable.

Much from the Atatürk state clashes with Islam as practised elsewhere. His republic’s symbol was the hat, introduced to replace the Ottoman fez and the Islamic turban in 1925. Last month’s cover in my Atatürk calendar has the great man opening a model farm that year with ladies in cloche hats, some maybe on their way to dancing the Charleston.

That revolutionary step was just one of many. Arabic words were replaced or just dismissed from the dictionary; the script was made Latin, rather than Arabic, almost overnight in 1928 — a move that counted in some eyes as blasphemous, since the language and script of the Koran expressed the word of God. Similar blasphemy occurred when the ezan, the call to prayer, was read out in Turkish. Peasants were turned away if they arrived in Ankara dressed in traditional garb. A Soviet system of « people’s houses » spread in the countryside, especially to show women that they did not have to be domestic servants.

A new version of Turkish history was taught in schools, putting the country at a distance from its Ottoman identity. Secular Turks looked on its Islamic past and the Caliphate as republican Frenchmen or Italians looked on the Catholic Church: as the enemy. Turkey was created, in other words, more or less as an express rejection of the world to east and south — something that will have been noted by Arab nations.

The Government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s moderately Islamist Prime Minister, comes from another tradition, one in which the Caliphate counts the most. His appeal to common Islamic brotherhood is not empty, and most recently it has been used on the Palestinians’ behalf.

But Arab-Turkish relations are never truly warm; many Turks are dismissive of the Arabs, and many Arabs would be dismissive of the so-called Turkish model. And on Israel Turkey is divided, because a great many Turks would associate Hamas with the PKK, the Kurdish separatist fighters. The much-vaunted pan-Islamic co-operation never gets anywhere.

Necmettin Erbakan, Turkey’s first Islamist Prime Minister, who held office for a year in 1996-97, dreamt up an Islamic foreign policy and lined up with several lovelies from that world — starting with Colonel Gaddafi. But during a trip by Erbakan to Tripoli, Gaddafi spat in the soup and denounced the Turks for not treating the Kurds properly. Erbakan’s second in command then denounced Gaddafi as a « bare-arsed Beduin ». So much for religious solidarity.

Now, just as the world looks to Turkey as an example for the Arabs to follow, Turkey’s own model is turning rather sour. Recently there was a huge demonstration for journalistic freedom in the centre of Istanbul, following the heavy interrogation and, in some cases, imprisonment of some 4,000 journalists.

Visitors to the country might not recognise the problem, but secular Turks are worried at « the desecularisation of modern Turkey » because Islam has been spreading: the calls to prayer, which ought to be made by a gentle human voice, now come bullyingly over megaphones in many quarters of Istanbul.

Understandably, the Turks wonder quite what « the Turkish model » is supposed to be now. For the educated classes it is obvious enough — the Atatürk state. Almost by definition, that state is not Muslim, let alone Arab.

Should a a tension arise between nationalism and Islam, then in Turkey nationalism would probably win.

Atatürk, when asked to describe the Turkish identity, just shrugged his shoulders and said, « We are similar to ourselves », and that is good enough to be going on with. The Turkish Model will stay Turkish.

* Norman Stone’s latest book is Turkey: A Short History (Thames and Hudson)

April 10, 2011
Ataturk’s legacy gets second look

By: Tom Ford

ISTANBUL, Turkey — They’re hanging strings of tiny, pastel flags across some of the main streets of this ancient city of 16 million. Turkey’s 25 political parties are getting ready for a June election that may make history.

Istanbul is already storied: the only city on two continents (Europe and Asia), a major force in three empires (Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman) and one of the world’s few — some Turks say the only — Islamic democracies.

The coming election will answer two critical questions:

Can Turkey strengthen its democracy even more?

And will it play a helpful role in advising the nations in the Middle East and Northern Africa that are embroiled in fights for democracy?

The first lesson the reformers can learn from Turkey: From the outset, they need strong, unflinching leadership. That is a problem for some of them. They don’t have powerful leaders and try to get by with collectives.

Contemporary Turkey was born and the nation’s founder, Mustafa Kemal, an army colonel, became a legend in the First World War Gallipoli campaign, the allies’ unsuccessful attempt to chase the Turks from the Dardanelles and open up an all-weather route to Germany.

Kemal realized that if he could hold two important hills, the Turks would win the war. They did so in bloody, hand-to-hand combat that cost 50,000 lives. Kemal was everywhere during the fight — in no man’s land on his belly urging his men on; riding his horse from hot spot to hot spot for four days and nights. “I don’t order you to attack. I order you to die,” he told his men. His entire senior staff was wiped out.

Kemal, later known as Atatürk, the father of Turkey, learned about modern democracy in an army library. When he came to power in 1923, he issued a blizzard of orders to westernize his nation, including changes to language, dress, social mores, government and law.

But the Turkish model, the nation’s liberals argue, can be improved in a constitutional review that is part of the elections in June. The existing constitution is clear about the roles of the military, judges and politicians. It is less clear about what citizens can do to promote their own interests. The constitution needs to be “civilianized,” says a young female writer. That’s not a great slogan. But “power to the people” is.

The Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association is more explicit. Among other things, it wants unrestricted use of headscarves for university students and teachers and public employees other than those, such as judges, prosecutors, police officers and soldiers, who perform duties where impartiality carries importance.

The association’s other demands include the right to conscientious objection, no compulsory religion courses in schools, the army’s general staff to be placed under the authority of the Ministry of Defence and a full parliamentary governmental system with no powers for the president that conflict with that system.

It’s a long list. And that raises the second lesson Turkey can teach the reformers in the Middle East and Northern Africa: Change comes about slowly in this region. Turkey has been working hard at improving its government system since the 1920s, but there is still much to be done.

A report last month by the respected Washington-based PEW Research Centre says 52 per cent of the Turks questioned saw a struggle in their country between “modernizers” and religious fundamentalists. But 74 per cent of them sided with the modernizers.

Some 75 per cent of Muslims in Turkey said they favoured democratic government more than any other kind, according to the research centre.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is expected to win the June election, is said to be “mildly” Islamic. But several businessmen told me he is “two-faced”, a fundamentalist who pretends to be interested in reform.

He can be ruthless. More than 400 journalists, politicians, academics and retired military officers are on trial, accused of being part of a network designed to overthrow the Erdogan government. “Erdogan is just getting his own back,” said a teacher.

Erdogan has refused to deal with Israel in the aftermath of Tel Aviv’s deadly attack on the Mavi Marmara flotilla bringing aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in May. Turkey wants Israel to apologize for killing nine Turks and pay compensation. Israel says its troops were defending themselves.

Erdogan refuses to endorse a constitutional change giving Kurds special powers to protect their language and culture — and some of them have taken to the streets.

The election issue that surprised me the most was the argument over headscarves. A group of young women is angry that none of the female candidates in the election wears a headscarf. Westerners often see headscarves as an example of male domination. These women don’t see it that way. They simply want the right to choose what they wear.

“We’re feminists,” said one. “Freedom of choice is important to us.”

Tom Ford is managing editor of The Issues Network.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 4, 2011 A10

www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/columnists, 4 April 2011

April 5, 2011