Worshipping the Leader

No one visiting Turkey, as I did recently, can fail to notice the omnipresent images of this man, who died over 70 years ago. There are photos of him in every hotel, public building, and school, as well as in most restaurants and bars, plus innumerable statues in parks and squares – and Istanbul’s airport is named after him, for good measure.

Mustapha Kemal, who chose for himself the name by which he’s generally known, Atatürk (“Father of the Turks”), belongs in that small group of national leaders who can claim not merely to have shaped but pretty much to have made their nations. And even compared with men like De Gaulle, Lenin or Mao Zedong, Atatürk’s achievement and lasting influence on his country was extraordinarily far-reaching.

He grew up in the final years of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, which had once ruled across great swathes of Eastern Europe and the Middle and Near East but which was by now reduced to an enfeebled rump within and around Turkey itself, as neighbouring powers such as Austria-Hungary and Russia picked off and annexed its former colonies. For proud and patriotic young army officers like Mustapha Kemal, Turkey, still ruled by the Sultan and under Islamic law as it had been hundreds of years previously, was an anachronism and an embarrassment in a world dominated by modern technocracies such as Great Britain and the United States.

In the chaos that followed the end of World War I, when the Sultan’s disastrous decision to ally Turkey with Germany led to the country’s occupation by the victorious British and French forces, Mustapha Kemal gradually emerged as the country’s uncontested leader, successfully fighting for and achieving full independence.

Over the next ten years he carried out some of the most far-reaching changes that any country has ever undergone in peacetime: the Sultanate was abolished and Turkey became a presidential republic, the language and writing system were changed from Arabic to Roman script, property and other rights for women were introduced to put them on a (nearly) equal footing with men, and the traditional fez (shown in this photo) and baggy trousers were abolished as both men and women were encouraged to wear modern Western clothing. And, most important of all, Islamic law was abolished and state and religion separated, as Turkey became the only formally secular state in the entire Muslim world – a status which it has rigorously conserved ever since.

It’s not surprising, then, that Turks should revere the memory of this extraordinary man, but what is perhaps surprising is the extent to which he has become sacred and untouchable. Criticizing or maligning Atatürk or his legacy is an offence potentially punishable by imprisonment (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/28/turkey.helenasmith), and Turkey recently joined the select ranks of countries that have banned YouTube when part of a documentary was posted referring to Atatürk’s heavy drinking. His relatively early death at the age of 57 was brought about by cirrhosis of the liver, but this could never be suggested in a book or newspaper published in Turkey. There are many rumours about his private life, that he was a womanizer, or even gay – his only marriage lasted a mere two years – but, again, such things are never discussed in Turkey itself.

So here’s the interesting question: is this phenomenon archaic, oppressive and undemocratic, or does it merely represent due respect for a man who towered above the rest of us as much as did Einstein or Beethoven? Especially for those of us who live in the English-speaking world, the very idea of a “great leader” is suspect, calling up images of the deluded and psychotic Kim Jong-Il. We relish stories about JFK’s philandering, and about how FDR concealed his disablement from the American public and was cuckolded by his wife. As far as we’re concerned, all our leaders have feet of clay and hands that stray, and we seem to take delight in demolishing them – some if not most of President Obama’s current difficulties derive from this by now well ingrained habit.

And yes, this is healthy to some extent – many of the worst atrocities of recent history have been committed by people blindly obeying their rulers – but it has its obverse too. It does seem to go with a widespread pettiness and meanness of spirit, an obsession with personal trivia, and a refusal to believe that anyone's eyes could be set on further or higher goals than instant self-gratification and self-aggrandisement. The status that Atatürk continues to enjoy in Turkey, for all the many anomalies it throws up, is an attempt to enshrine a belief in greatness of spirit and nobility of purpose in the fabric of the country’s daily life. After all, there are greater rights, and more important duties, than “taking the mick” and watching piano-playing cats on YouTube.