Father Turk

For the past few days the country has been awash in Turkey’s flag and great banners of Mustafa Kemal, the man seen as Turkey's founder. We’ve just come through Republic Day, commemorating the founding of modern Turkey in 1923.

When we asked what happens on Republic Day, people seemed not to have given it much thought, then told us that school children will have a holiday. When we say we thought we heard a parade band warming up, they agree, Oh yes, that too.

Maybe someone in Turkey takes this seriously – some colonels in Ankara? – but not the folks we talked to.

All these extra banners of Mustafa Kemal (he named himself Atatűrk, Father Turk) remind just how ubiquitous his image is, any old day, across the country. Photos in households, pensions, offices, bus terminals, banknotes, stamps, everywhere: glaring at you eye to eye like some Houdini; looking off, visionary-like, into the distance and surely seeing your future; in a pinstriped suit, the necessary cigarette in hand, looking like your trusty banker; the older, stern, wise father with the receding hairline and eyes and mouth you probably don’t want to cross.

Then there are the statues in the square of every self-respecting city: the man riding majestic steads, the martial father in military garb leading the ‘fight for independence’, the man looking towards the hills, seeing your future again. But that’s hardly the beginning; there are still the Atatűrk main streets, Atatűrk squares, Atatűrk schools and universities, Atatűrk on the bills, everything Atatűrk.

We read that every school child is told and can repeat the agreed story of Father Turk and the founding of Turkey, that Turks are ‘devoted’ to the man. And yet the two of three times we are given the summary version of his role in Turkey’s history, the story is told quickly, rote-like, with about as much interest as that shown for Republic Day.

Although I making a wild guess here, I suspect there are about as many Turks, deep in their gut, who give two hoots about Father Turk as find the daily calls to prayer really grating. It could be a handful, it could be millions. In any case, the numbers may be moot because it’s seen as highly offensive (even illegal) in Turkey to show anything but respect for the Father.

Mustafa Kemal himself is characterized by many historians as an enlightened despot (what does this mean?), even an historically necessary one, and then compared favorably with other despots of his time, like Stalin.

What especially catches my attention about the man is his program of creating an exclusive, monolithic sense of ‘Turkishness’ against which all other cultural identities inside Turkey (such as being a Kurd or Greek) were seen as illegitimate, even antagonistic and threatening to the state. It wasn’t long before Greece and Turkey were cleansing their countries of the other’s peoples, and a people like the Kurds were seen as having no cultural rights at all, something they have always refused to accept.

The Atatűrk who’s staring off into the distance appears to be looking West, not East – choosing the Roman alphabet over Arab script, outlawing the Ottoman (‘backwards’) fez, separating the state and Islam (still deeply contentious), instituting universal suffrage, decreeing that Turks take surnames (no one had needed such things), and much, much more.

‘Turkey’ as a diverse multitude still feels like it faces both east and west, which is perhaps for the good in today’s world, although it also feels like the key levers of public manipulation (and imprisonment and assassination) are still bound up with demands to choose sides between the convenient abstractions of East or West or Turkey.

A footnote: I've also come across a few photos that raise the age-old question of what 'great' men like Mustafa would do (say, in place of his 'everyone's gotta be a Turk' idea) if he'd only had a few more opportunities to just goof around ... like having a swing or playing X's and O's.