doğmunun 125. yılında mustafa kemal atatürk - Atatürk Araştırma ...

ATATÜRK’S REFORMS AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE MUSLIM WORLD 539
reforms. Coercion, inefficiency, haste and waste alienated many
sections of the society and created conflicts and tensions. The
growth of the civil service resulted in over-bureaucratization and
red tape. The expansion of the armed forces cost a big chunk of the
budget without any corresponding advantage. Economic difficulties
were subordinated to political ambitions. The mishandling of the
ban on the veil or chadors produced an even worse reaction. The
order was brusque and inflexible and the protests and violence led to
fierce repression, especially in Meshed, over orders for men to wear
bowler hats. Reza Shah failed to realize that public protest was but
symptomatic of the deeper divisions in the society. By the time his
exit came in 1941, Reza Shah was left with no committed support—
almost exactly what had happened to Amanullah in Afghanistan a
decade earlier. 77 The only enduring feature of his reforms was the
restructuring of the justice department that brought credit to the
French system which was adopted as a model. 78
As far as the impact of Mustafa Kemal’s reforms on the Muslims
of British India is concerned one needs to take a closer look because
the Indians and the Turks had been linked by the traditional pan-
Islamic affinity. Tensions between them had emerged only lately
over such issues as the abolition of the caliphate and the rash
transformation of the Turkish society on western lines. With the
exit of the Ottomans and the rise of Mustafa Kemal a new equation
between the Indian Muslims and the Turks had to be worked out.
Turkey’s switch over from its traditional role as the protector of the
darul ‘l-Islam to being the guardian of a modern-secular state was
an abomination to the pan-Islamists who had conducted a vigorous
campaign to save the Ottoman Empire from Allied spoliation.
For the modernists, however, it was an opportunity to identify
themselves with the Kemalists. 79 Two of the most admired leaders
77 Ibid., 313-33; and Joseph M. Upton, The History of Modern Iran: An
Interpretation (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1961), 55-7.
78 Katouzian, State and Society in Iran, 313 ff; and Shahrough Akhavi, Religion
and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy-State Relations in Pahlavi
Period (Albany, 1980), 40-3.
79 M. Naeem Qureshi, ‘The Rise of Atatürk and its Impact on Contemporary
Muslim India: The Early Phase’, Proceedings: International Conference on
Atatürk (Istanbul, 1981), no. 55.