First Secretary of the CC of the Communist Party, Turkey (KP), soL columnist, Kemal Okuyan wrote an article on November 10, 2016, with regard to the question how to approach Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in socialist Turkey.
Approaching to Mustafa Kemal in Socialist Turkey
A child, at the age of 7 or 8, shouts at the top of his lungs, "I shall throw myself into the fire...”; he is not singing a pop song, he is delivering a speech at a schoolyard with a microphone in his hand. Apparently, that is a rehearsal for the Atatürk Memorial Day (November 10) and his words are referring to the Turkish War of Independence and the assertiveness of those resisting the invaders. As he is setting the whole neighbourhood in an uproar, a nice man is grumbling: “Son, don't throw yourself into the fire.”
Back then it was exactly the same for us and so had been previously... They teach Atatürk to little kids like that since they are unable to do otherwise. Although there is no room for abstract figures, religious dogmas, and emulation of death and sacrifice in child education, they do so and turn Mustafa Kemal into a fetish for little kids which ends up with alienation.
Now some say “They want to make Mustafa Kemal sink into oblivion”, but forgetting has already been undergoing and this is partly due to the mindset that tests children with fire.
It was obvious that a "Mustafa Kemal" who was to be described to children and young people with his real values would eventually be bothersome. Certainly, we would not expect the system to legitimize the idea of revolution. Therefore, Mustafa Kemal was reduced to just "a soldier who chases enemies”. Today the AKP stomps on Mustafa Kemal's legacy and yet sees no harm in maintaining the same primitiveness. They somehow need generations that would “throw themselves into the fire for the promise of paradise.”
If a supernatural, lonesome and single “liberator” existed in history, then s/he could definitely exist today as well!
That is a long story; here in this article I am more concerned with the question how we shall portray Mustafa Kemal in socialist Turkey, not for children but for adults...
Let's start.
He is a great revolutionary.
He was the most significant bearer of bourgeois revolutionism, which emerged in the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century and took its fullest form in so-called Young Turks.
With his leadership skills, he compensated the disrepute that bourgeois revolutionism fell into due to the corrosion during the rule of the Committee of Union and Progress and the cadre weakness in the bourgeois revolutionary movement.
He positioned himself at the “revolutionary front” in international arena just after the First World War, which had shattered the balance in the entire world, and achieved important successes in favor of this front.
He decisively acted and resorted to his personal authority in order to abolish the monarchy and the caliphate.
He accomplished super-structural transformations, “each” of which was obviously a progression on such a challenging and backward social base, and adopted a highly radical attitude with regard to laicism.
He was a pragmatist politician. He sought for coming to an agreement with the Great Powers even while struggling against the imperialist invasion, and largely succeeded in doing so. He aimed at gaining time for a shrinking Turkey, which gradually gave up its irredentist claims.
He used this time so as to enable the development of capitalism in Turkey. Even his “statist” economic policies concentrated on the development of capitalist class.
He was almost never influenced by Marxism, and stayed away even from movements of thought that could shape his personality as a bourgeois revolutionary, which therefore caused Kemalism, which was called after his name, to be interpreted quite differently.
Having anticipated that flourishing of a socialist alternative in Turkey could have been dangerous in every aspect for his own project, he attempted to eliminate or neutralize such actors that had the potential to strengthen that alternative.
He avoided radical steps that would accelerate the development of capitalism in agriculture, and he tended to defeat the political and ideological threat of backward economic structures as compromising with them.
He attempted to keep the Kurdish question under control in alliance with the tribal structure, and tried to eliminate the elements which were not included in this alliance.
Does any of this seem to be contradictory?
I do not think so. The horizon of the bourgeois revolution in Turkey could not have gone beyond this. Thus far!
Now...
In socialist Turkey, in my opinion, it would be impossible not to approach this “record” friendly, or not to give a special place to it within its legacy.
Doubtlessly, the course of the revolutionary struggle in Turkey and the ideological-political coordinates of the socialist construction will be determinative; however, as it becomes highly apparent that a revolutionary practice distant from these historically progressive steps would be impossible in our geography, then it becomes possible to forecast today what sort of a place would be attributed to Mustafa Kemal.
Is it too early to talk about that?
Why would it be?
We need to look ahead. Because reactionism and looking back has “thrown this country into the fire”...
