2008_10_SRP_CornellKaraveli_Turkey

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Svante E. Cornell and Halil Magnus Karaveli
Atatürk’s endeavor. Already in the 1960s, Indian Prime minister Jawaharlal
Nehru had notably told a Turkish interlocutor that “you Turks don’t realize
the greatness of your accomplishment”. Since then, the perception of
Atatürk’s legacy has been distorted by the military’s monopolization – in
rhetoric – of the label of “Kemalism”, especially during the dictatorship of
1980-83, when in fact, secularism was being undermined.
The result is a lasting intellectual confusion about what the implications of
the Kemalist heritage really are. Indeed, the genesis of that confusion can be
traced to the epoch of Kemal Atatürk himself. In his memoirs, Hasan Rıza
Soyak, Atatürk’s chief of cabinet, recounts how the president reacted when
he was presented with a blueprint for a new party program for the ruling
CHP by the party secretary Recep Peker, who had been inspired by what he
had seen during a trip to fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. “What kind of
disturbed thinking is this”, Atatürk burst out, after having spent a whole
night reading in disgust. “Apparently, not even those who are closest to us
have understood what we are trying to achieve. We strive for a kind of
regime in which even those who would want to reinstate the sultanate would
be allowed to form a political party.” 20 That observation is echoed in the
recent statement of Şerif Mardin, the doyen of Turkish sociology: “The
Kemalists themselves have not properly understood Atatürk, let alone being
able to explain Kemalism and secularism and have them embraced by
society.”
Mardin stirred debate when he earlier this year announced the defeat of the
republic: “The mosque, the imam, and the books read by the imam, have
defeated the school and the teacher, the structure that represents the
modernizing republic”, he maintained. 21 According to the renowned
sociologist, religion is victorious because “the republic has not given the
question of what is good, right and aesthetic any deeper consideration. That
is the deficiency of Kemalism.” In fact, the teacher has long since ceased to
be a symbol of republican modernization, defeated not so much by the imam
as abandoned to traditionalism by the republic itself.
20 Hasan Rıza Soyak, Atatürk’ten Hatiralar, Yapı Kredi Yayınları 2008, p. 62.
21 Halil Magnus Karaveli, ”Where Did the Secular Republic Fail?”, Turkey Analyst, 4
June 2008. (http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/inside/turkey/2008/080604B.html)