Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's cult of personality

Atatürk's cult of personality was started during the life of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk^[1] and continued by his successors after his death in 1938, by members of both his Republican People's Party and opposition parties alike,^[2] and in a limited amount by himself during his lifetime in order to popularize and cement his social and political reforms as a founder and the first President of Turkey.^[3] The cult has been compared to similar personality cults in the authoritarian regimes of Central Asia and the Soviet Union.^[4][5]

A building facade with Turkish flags and a banner of Atatürk

Atatürk Mask, a large sculpture of Atatürk in İzmir

Overview

Following the defeat and partitioning of the Ottoman Empire by the Allies in the aftermath of World War I, Mustafa Kemal led the Turkish National Movement through a War of Independence against Greece, Armenia, France, Britain, and other invading countries. Under his leadership, the Republic of Turkey was declared in 1923, and he was honoured with the name Atatürk ("Father of the Turks") by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in 1934. His other titles include Great Leader (Ulu Önder), Eternal Commander (Ebedî Başkomutan), Head Teacher (Başöğretmen), and Eternal Chief (Ebedî Şef).^[6][7]

Numerous Turks attend marches and meetings in memory of Atatürk on 10 November, the day of his death. A famous quote is written on this billboard: "My moral heritage is science and reason." Despite this seemingly "pro-science" sentiment, Atatürk espoused and promoted several pseudoscientific and pseudohistorical theories, such as the Turkish History Thesis and the Sun Language Theory.^[8][9][10]

Atatürk's memory remains a major part of Turkish politics and society into the 21st century.^[11] Almost every city in Turkey has streets named for him, and statues of him are commonly found in city squares, schools, and public offices, the latter two of which feature his portrait. The phrase Ne mutlu Türküm diyene (How happy is the one who says "I am a Turk"), which Atatürk used in his speech delivered for the 10th Anniversary of the Republic in 1933, is used widely in Turkey and is often seen along with his statues. It continues to be part of the compulsory Student Oath, though it was removed between 2013 and 2018.^[12] It was once again removed in 2021.

Atatürk's cult of personality is sometimes compared to those of authoritarian rulers of Central Asian countries, such as Nursultan Nazarbayev and Saparmurat Niyazov,^[5] but differs significantly in light of Atatürk's democratic and progressive reforms in Turkey and because most of the statues and memorials of him were erected after his death. For example, before the 1950s, only the incumbent President of Turkey's image appeared on Turkish currency, but Prime Minister Adnan Menderes (1950–1960), in a political blow to rival President İsmet İnönü, passed a law to restore the late Atatürk's image on the currency in order to deny İnönü's image appearing instead.^[2] Menderes's government, although opposed to Atatürk's Republican People's Party (which served as the opposition party in Parliament to Menderes's Democrat Party government), moved his body to a mausoleum 15 years after his death in 1953.^[2] It also passed a law in 1951 that criminalized insulting "Atatürk's memory."^[2]

The Economist wrote in 2012 that his personality cult "carpets the country with busts and portraits of the great man" and that this has been "nurtured by Turkey's generals, who have used his name to topple four governments, hang a prime minister and attack enemies of the republic."^[13] According to this British weekly, "hard-core Islamists despise Ataturk for abolishing the caliphate in 1924 and expunging piety from the public space. They feed rumours that he was a womaniser, a drunk, even a crypto-Jew."^[13]

A 2008 article in National Identities also discussed Atatürk's ubiquitous presence in the country:

Atatürk's houses exist in an Atatürk-inundated context with his face and sayings appearing on all official documents, buildings, television channels, newspapers and schoolyards, coins and banknotes. Moreover, regardless of personal belief, every Turk lives in a country where nationalism is part of standard political discourses. Politicians, teachers and journalists appeal to the nation and Atatürk on a daily basis. Yet they are not alone in this. The omnipresence of Atatürk paraphernalia can only be partly attributed to state sponsorship. Atatürk's face appears on posters behind supermarket counters, in barbershops and video stores, in bookshops and banks; Atatürk talismans even dangle from car mirrors, while Atatürk pins adorn lapels. And even the Turks who do not join in with such spontaneous commemorations know how to 'read' the Atatürk semiotic universe.^[14]

Law on Atatürk

Turkish Law 5816 ("The Law Concerning Crimes Committed Against Atatürk")^[15] was passed 13 years after Atatürk's death on July 25, 1951, by Prime Minister Adnan Menderes's government,^[16] and protects "Atatürk's memory" from being offended by any Turkish citizen.^[17] In 2011, there were 48 convictions for "insulting Atatürk"^[13] and insulting Atatürk's memory is punishable by up to three years in jail.^[18] The law has been interpreted in a very broad way, covering not only the protection of Atatürk's memory, but also of his legacy. Charges have been brought in domestic proceedings against persons who challenge the official, very positive, assessment of the first years of the Republic of Turkey and Atatürk's role.^[19]

Statues

The first statue of Atatürk was sculpted in 1926 in the Sarayburnu district of Istanbul by Austrian sculptor Heinrich Krippel.^[20] Today, statues of Atatürk can be found all over Turkey.^[21][22]

See also

• Kemalism
• Atatürk's Reforms

References

1. Berger, Lutz (2019). "The Leader as Father. Personality Cults in Modern Turkey". Kemalism as a Fixed Variable in the Republic of Turkey. Ergon-Verlag. pp. 119–128. ISBN 978-3-95650-632-1.
2. Andrew Mango (26 August 2002). Ataturk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey. Overlook. p. 36. ISBN 978-1-59020-924-0. In 1937, Bayar had sought to outdo İnönü in his adulation of Atatürk. Now the Democrat Party government outdid him in signs of respect for Atatürk's memory. His body was transferred to a grandiose mausoleum in 1953. A law was passed in 1951 making it a criminal offense to insult Atatürk's memory.
3. Tezcür, Güneş Murat (2010). Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey: The Paradox of Moderation. University of Texas Press. p. 70. ISBN 9780292773639. A man who was either irreligious or did not wear his faith on his sleeve, Atatürk established a cult of personality that has survived until now. He did not bother to attend the Friday prayers, a symbol of ruler-people unity...
4. Çandar, Cengiz (2000). Ataturk's Ambiguous Legacy. The Wilson Quarterly, 24(4), 88.
5. Allison, Roy (1996). Challenges for the former Soviet south. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. p. 27. ISBN 9780815703211. A state-promoted "cult of personality" is developing rapidly in some of the Central Asian republics (although here, as in other ... This was clearly modeled on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the authoritarian modernizing leader of republican Turkey.
6. Levine, Lynn A. (2010). Frommer's Turkey. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Pub. p. 31. ISBN 9780470877739. Mustafa Kemal was given the name Atatürk ("father of the Turks") by the Grand National Assembly
7. Villar, Juan (2004). The Seventh Wonder. Coral Springs, FL: Llumina Press. p. 28. ISBN 9781595262417. The Turkish parliament proclaimed Mustafa's last name to be Ataturk, "Father of the Turks." Today, his picture hangs in every government office and business establishment, his state appears in every city, and his statues forbid that anything bad or ridiculous be said about him. Free Speech was not among Ataturk's reforms.
8. Akyol, Mustafa (2014). "How Turkey Sabotaged Its Future". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-09-02.
9. Yavuz, M. Hakan (2003). Islamic Political Identity in Turkey. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-028965-2.
10. Tucker, Ernest (2016). The Middle East in Modern World History. Routledge. p. 166. ISBN 978-1-315-50824-5.
11. Foreign Press on Cyprus, Volumes 10-11, Public Information Office, 1997 "It is the army's self-appointed role to maintain the secular character of a state that is 90 percent Muslim, but whose modern founder Kemal Ataturk forcibly wrenched into Westernization. The Ataturk cult of personality still towers over Turkey"
12. "Court rules Student Oath should be reinstated in Turkey". Ahval News. Oct 18, 2018.
13. "A secularist's lament". The Economist. 25 February 2012. Retrieved 17 March 2013.
14. Glyptis 2008, p. 356.
15. Bali, Rıfat N. (2007). New documents on Atatürk: Atatürk as viewed through the eyes of American diplomats. Isis Press. p. 32.
16. Seibert, Thomas (16 August 2011). "Some Turks ready to abolish law that protects memory of Ataturk". The National. Retrieved 13 July 2013.
17. Kaya, Mehmed S. (2009). The Zaza Kurds of Turkey: A Middle Eastern Minority in a Globalised Society. London: Tauris Academic Studies. p. 209. ISBN 9781845118754.
18. Finkel, Andrew (2012). Turkey: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 32. ISBN 9780199733040.
19. Baranowska, Grażyna (2020). Bachmann, Klaus (ed.). Memory laws in Turkey: protecting the memory of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Berlin: Peter Lang. pp. 107–125. ISBN 978-3-631-81353-9. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
20. EĞRİKAVUK, IŞIL (9 January 2011). "Unaesthetic Atatürk monuments remain taboo in Turkey". Hurriyet. Retrieved 21 March 2013.
21. Navaro-Yashin, Yael (2002). Faces of the State: Secularism and Public Life in Turkey. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. p. 89. ISBN 9780691088457. Today the statue that is most frequently encountered all over Turkey is still that of Ataturk.
22. Üngör, Ugur Ümit (2011). The Making of Modern Turkey:Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950. Oxford University Press. p. 180. ISBN 9780191640766. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was the central focus of public manifestations of memory. Sculptures of him spread across the country in a matter of years and well before his death adorned every main square in the country.

Bibliography

• Copeaux, Etienne, ″La transcendance d'Atatürk″, in Mayeur-Jaouen Catherine (ed.), Saints et héros du Moyen-Orient contemporain, Paris, Maisonneuve et Larose, 2002, pp. 121–138.
• Glyptis, Leda (December 2008). "Living up to the father: The national identity prescriptions of remembering Atatürk; his homes, his grave, his temple". National Identities. 10 (4). London: 353–372. Bibcode:2008NatId..10..353G. doi:10.1080/14608940802271647. ISSN 1460-8944. S2CID 145591969.
• Mandel, Mike, and Zakari, Chantal, The State of Ata. The Contested Imagery of Power in Turkey, Eighteen Publications, Boston, 2010, 256-xvi p.

Further reading

• "The Myth of 'New Turkey': Kemalism and Erdoganism as Two Sides of the Same Coin". Dr. Ceren Şengül. News About Turkey. 7 May 2024.