Visitors throughout Turkey today, November 10, will see an amazing sight. At 9:05 a.m., everyone, everywhere in Turkey will stop what they are doing and come to a halt. Traffic and public transportation will stop, and cars will be silent. People will stand looking straight ahead and maintain a minute of silence. Then traffic will start up again, and everyone will continue on their way. The Turks will take these actions – or better, inactions – to honour the founder of the modern Turkish state who died precisely at that moment on November 10, 1938. Mustafa Kemal, better known as Atatürk, maintains a great presence in this country nearly a century after his death. As the man who made modern Turkey and served as its first president from 1922 to his death, he plays a dual role as both founding father and patron saint.
You see his image everywhere. It adorns all the denominations of Turkish currency as well as banners that fly before government buildings and private businesses alike. It is a crime in Turkey to insult his memory or to destroy objects that represent him. Some have seen this, of course, as a violation of free speech, but it indicates just how important a figure he is to modern Turkish identity.
Atatürk as Military Hero
He was born Mustafa Kemal in 1881 in the city of Salonika, which is today Thessaloniki in northern Greece. His father was a military man, and the son followed in his footsteps. (He received the honorary surname Atatürk in 1934 from the Turkish parliament for his services to the state. The name means ‘father of the Turks’.) He graduated from the Ottoman military college in 1905 and by the time the First World War broke out in 1914, Atatürk had a great deal of military experience and military success under his belt.
But it was the fabled Battle of Gallipoli in 1915–1916 that sealed his reputation. As front-line leader he was key in repelling the Allied forces and keeping the peninsula in Ottoman hands. Gallipoli remains a defining moment for modern Turks in the development of their country. Atatürk served as well in Africa and Palestine, and was the only Turkish general in the war never to have been defeated.
The Ottomans, of course, had allied with Germany, and after their defeat, the victorious Allies (Britain, France, etc.) occupied Anatolia. Over the next few years there were conflicts both among the Turks themselves and with various forces supported by the allies. Atatürk was again responsible for a series of military victories, and was able eventually to assert Turkish independence. The Turks addressed Britain’s main concern by guaranteeing free passage through the Bosphorus.
Making a Modern Country
Once the Republic of Turkey was established on 29 October 1923, Atatürk was elected its first president and he remained in that role until his death in 1938. He reformed virtually every aspect of Turkish society, political, cultural, social, and economic – he even changed the alphabet from Arabic to Roman. His goal was to create a secular state, believing that it was essential for Turkey to become ‘westernized’, and he was particularly keen that the Turkish educational system could produce people who could move Turkey into the ‘modern’ world. He strongly supported the education of women, and in 1930 women gained the right to vote in local elections. Four years later, they could vote in all elections. This was significantly earlier than in many western nations.
It’s hard to think of another individual who shaped a modern nation to such an extent. One can get a sense of his reforms here, where you’ll see that even the fact that Turks today have a surname goes back to him! One can see why the Turks venerate him as they do and why he occupies such a large place in their minds and hearts.
