PDF Dosyası - Ankara Üniversitesi Kitaplar Veritabanı

MUSTAFA KEMAL ATATÜRKProf. Dr. Kamel Abu JABER*Since the advent of islam, no other man, ruler or otherwise, managedto challenge the system from within like Attatürk did. In other culturesperhaps only Martin Luther, Kari Marx and a few others have dared tochallenge the very fundamentals of the systems in which they foundthemselves.Were I an historian of the 24th or 25th century, I might have the benefıtof hindsight with regard to the Kemalist experiment. As it were, it isonly a few decades old; and ongoing experiment whose end results areyet to be seen. It is, nowadays, being met with fierce resistance by popülistislam vvhich clearly sees in it a challenge to its very core values. Infact, hardly had two or three decades passed when the first serious stirringsof resistance were witnessed. As time passed, two camps wereforming: the Kemalists, who were among the intellectuals and high rankingmilitary; and the masses of Anatolia who, like most peoples of theMiddle East are religious by the very nature of their existence. Religionto them, is the warm blanket wrapped around their lives, protecting andgiving sustenance to their spiritual and mundane needs, hopes, and aspirations,even their very lives.Among the three majör groups of the area: Arabs, Turks and Iranians,the dialectic between nationalism and islam is a continuing processwhose end result is an earnest search for identity. The search takes placeat several levels and in varying degrees of intensity depending on timeand place. Often it is violent, both physically and intellectualy, a symptomof societies in that very difficult historical process of transition.Caught between the imperatives of both modernity and traditionalism,with one foot firmly planted in the familiar, though increasingly less comfortablemansion of the past, with the other, already treading in the realmof change.Because of the traditional mode of life of these societies, the responsecame invariably from above. Since avvarness came in the wake of* President, Institute of Diplomacy, Amman.85