Today there is a little-known but violent debate for public opinion in America between the Turks and the Armenians. In the course of demanding recognition of the Ottoman Empire’s atrocities against its Armenian citizens, today’s Armenians have carried their accusations even further and besmirched the founder of the modern Turkish Republic, Kemal Ataturk. Who was Ataturk truly – a heroic, honorable savior for the oppressed Turks or an evil, racist general who replaced one evil government, the Ottoman Empire, with another, the Turkish Republic?

Ataturk was born as Mustafa Kemal in 1881 in Salonika, a city in the Macedonian province of the Ottoman Empire. His father was a failed businessman who died during Kemal’s childhood. The family was strongly Muslim, and Kemal’s mother wished for him to become an imam, a Muslim preacher. However, his strong desire was to be a military officer, and he was able to prevail on her and gain entrance to a military secondary school and college, and became a captain in the Turkish army.

Strange influences were working on him. Reading French books to improve his skills in that language, he began reading ‘subversive’ books. He became fiercely nationalistic while admiring the Western nations. Any strong Muslim convictions he had were lost; he was at most a nominal Muslim.

As an officer he became involved in subversive organizations, and in 1908 was part of the Young Turk revolution. However, he did not in fact get along with the leaders of the revolution; they wanted a limited amount of reform and power for themselves as they sought to restore the Ottoman Empire, while Kemal, even at this early point, wanted greater reforms and distrusted the Young Turk leaders.

In the midst of this tension Kemal advanced through the ranks of the Turkish army, serving all over the empire over the next six years. Then came World War I. The Young Turks chose to throw their lot in with the Germans, who had been flattering them with attention and aid for years now. But it was to be an unsuccessful alliance; the Germans dreamed of inspiring a Muslim holy war directed against the British through the Middle East and into India, but were unable to motivate such a jihad. The Turks slowly lost ground to the Russians in the Caucasus and the British and Arabs in Palestine. But as his country was falling Kemal’s star was rising. When the British landed at Gallipoli near Istanbul, Kemal commanded the Turkish troops that repulsed them decisively, making him a national hero.

This status was to prove important. For when the Ottoman Empire was forced to admit defeat, Kemal was able to obtain a post in Anatolia (central Turkey) with the aid of pro-nationalist officials in Istanbul. He snuck out, and from Anatolia immediately began to organize a resistance force. He called a series of congresses, using the railroad town of Ankara as his base.

In Istanbul the Sultan was practically a puppet under the control of the Allies, and the remains of the Ottoman Empire were carved up, given to minorities such as the Greeks and the Armenians and divided into ‘areas of influence’ for the economic profit of Italy, France, and England. But when the Allies saw the Nationalists’ power increasing, they occupied Istanbul, inflaming the situation and giving Kemal the opportunity he was waiting for to form his own government in Ankara.

The Sultanate had lost the support of its own people. Kemal’s government managed with difficulty to unite the Turkish people. From central Anatolia his armies expanded fairly easily to the south and east – the war-weary French quickly abandoning their area of interest in southern Turkey and the Russians abandoning the Armenians in the east, dooming them to lose their chance for statehood. But the Turkish Nationalists would have to fight a long war with Greece over southwestern Turkey and the important port of Smyrna (from Biblical times: Acts 19, Rev. 2:8-11) , now called Izmir. Against all odds, the Turks defeated the Greeks and retook the area. This allowed them to negotiate treaties with all of the Allies, the final one with the British requiring the British to relinquish Constantinople.

On October 29, 1923, mostly by Kemal’s engineering, the provisional government in Ankara created the official Republic of Turkey. Kemal immediately began his long-dreamed-of program of modernization. Against the resistance of conservative elements of the government, he implemented many reforms from his place of power as President. First of all, he abolished the Caliphate – the office of the head of the Muslim religion – as unfitting for a modern republic. He introduced a new alphabet, switching from an Arabic system to a Roman system. The legal system was completely reworked, giving full rights to all citizens and eliminating Islamic law. To modernize the culture, he forbade the wearing of the traditional Turkish hat, the fez, and did not allow women to cover their heads in Islamic fashion while in the Parliament building.

Kemal continued to head the Turkish government until his death. In 1935 he took the surname “Ataturk”, or “Father of the Turks”. The country had heavy economic troubles and a significant amount of political infighting and intrigue. Near his death, Kemal steered Turkey to closer relations with England and France as he foresaw World War II, which he would not live to see. He died on October 10, 1938, and the moment of his death is still commemorated in Turkey every year.

So who was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk? The Turks (who adore him and place his picture in nearly every shop and his statue in every city), as well as many foreigners hold him up as a hero who saved his country, while others, particularly the Armenians, consider him a ruthless general who continued the genocide begun by the Ottomans. Ataturk was certainly not a perfect hero; his abuse of alcohol often led to indiscretions and he also had a volatile temper. His ethics were not sound either; his first priority was the good of his homeland, and all ethical situations were relative to this. In one case he refused to keep his word to save some prisoners from execution, until it was too late.

However, Ataturk was not a mass murderer or supporter of genocide. Armenians’ principle accusation is that he was responsible for a giant fire that destroyed much of Smyrna when he captured the city from the Greeks during the War of Independence, but in truth, the source of the fire has not been conclusively proven, with both sides blaming the other. Individual Turkish soldiers did most definitely commit war crimes during the course of the war, and of course the non-Turkish populations fleeing the war as refugees suffered many troubles, but Ataturk definitely did not order any organized attempts at genocide.

A strong and forward-thinking leader, Ataturk saved Turkey from sharing the fate of oppression that Germany suffered after World War I, and greatly modernized and westernized the country. Turkey has copied much of the surface of western culture without the core substance that originated it – Christianity – so that today in Turkey, there is a great tension between the old ways of Islam and the new ways of materialism. But even though the equality, modern economy, education, and the many other positive things Ataturk began lacked a basis in Christianity, they are nevertheless great accomplishments and mark Ataturk as a flawed, but great man.

Sources:
Compilation by Aksan, Akil. Ataturk on Religion, Secularism, Liberty, and National Sovereignty. 10 Nov. 1999. http://www.turkishdailynews.com/old_editions/11_10_99/feature.htm. Accessed 12 Dec. 2003.

Adalian, Rouben. Turkey, Republic of, and the Armenian Genocide. http://www.armenian-genocide.org/encyclopedia/turkey.htm. Accessed 12 Dec. 2003.

Senators Weinstein and Marchi. Denouncing the Ottoman Massacres of Armenians. http://www.armenian-genocide.org/Affirmation.121/current_category.40/affirmation_detail.html. Accessed 12 Dec. 2003

Author not available. Press release contextualizing the Armenian experience in the Ottoman Empire. http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/iisite/press/pr_armenian_ottoman_workshop.html. Accessed 12 Dec. 2003.

Author not available. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. http://www.ataturk.com/index2.html. Accessed 12 Dec. 2003.

Kinross, Patrick. Ataturk, the Rebirth of a Nation. Phoenix, a division of Orion Books Ltd, London. © 1988

Article on “Ataturk”. World Book Encyclopedia; World Book Inc. © 1995