Thank you very much for this. I have always found Atatürk completely fascinating partly due to the admiring biography by Kinross. Although I read it several years ago, I remember reading about some of Atatürk’s projects in disbelief, in particular the reform of the language and alphabet which I would love to read more about. I also visited his museum in Thessaloniki and the Military Museum in Istanbul where he features prominently. It must be hard to write a biography of such a person and not flinch at describing their lesser qualities. Do you think Hanioğlu managed it well?
Geoffrey Lewis has a book on the language reform, aptly called The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success. I read it some time ago, but I may write about it in the future.
Yes, I think Hanioglu presented a good “corrective” to all the nationalist narratives on Ataturk out there. He does a good job of presenting him as a man of his time and not as a solitary genius, which is important to grasp, I believe.
Thank you for the reference - it’s in the internet archive! Seems an excellent read as well. Meanwhile, in Pankaj Mishra’s Age of Anger, I came across Atatürk and his reforms under a different focus. An outstanding book which I recommend.
No problem! I may do a review of the book myself later on. It’s been a while since I read it but from what I remember, one part of it was mostly linguistic, which was not too interesting for me, but then he goes on to the language reform, which was the part I mostly focused on.
Thank you for the book recommendation. I’ll definitely check it out!
What is becoming clear in these posts is a history of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey from a Turkish perspective. As such they offer a Western European like myself with an invaluable perspective on a country of which I am clearly quite ignorant! Keep them coming Doga!
That’s a valid point. From the beginning of the 19th onwards, the military has been one of the key drivers of modernization, etc… for the Ottoman Empire. From there, it is not too far-fetched to argue that the military continued to play that role in modern Turkey and saw itself as the “guardian” of the Republic.
Interestingly, however, Mustafa Kemal was rather against mixing politics into the military. In fact, once the war was won in 1922 and he became the head of the state in 1923, you can rarely see him in a military uniform. He left his military identity behind and insisted on ruling the country as a “civilian.”
Very interesting. I saw a Turkish TV series a couple of years ago, called ‘Pera Palace’, which if I remember correctly touches slightly on this historic development. I thought it was very good and this is interesting.
‘Sun Language’? Could you please elaborate? Intrigued. Some faint hint of Steppes Atavism / Tengrism?
Sorry for the delayed response.
Here is the Wikipedia article on it, which can explain it much better than I can:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Language_Theory#:~:text=The%20Sun%20Language%20Theory%20(Turkish,one%20proto%2DTurkic%20primal%20language.
Looking forward to a future article on why “a new civic religion would eventually take the place of Islam in society” wasn’t fully realized
That’s an interesting question Richard. I’ll think about it.
Thank you very much for this. I have always found Atatürk completely fascinating partly due to the admiring biography by Kinross. Although I read it several years ago, I remember reading about some of Atatürk’s projects in disbelief, in particular the reform of the language and alphabet which I would love to read more about. I also visited his museum in Thessaloniki and the Military Museum in Istanbul where he features prominently. It must be hard to write a biography of such a person and not flinch at describing their lesser qualities. Do you think Hanioğlu managed it well?
Thank you for reading it!
Geoffrey Lewis has a book on the language reform, aptly called The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success. I read it some time ago, but I may write about it in the future.
Yes, I think Hanioglu presented a good “corrective” to all the nationalist narratives on Ataturk out there. He does a good job of presenting him as a man of his time and not as a solitary genius, which is important to grasp, I believe.
Thank you for the reference - it’s in the internet archive! Seems an excellent read as well. Meanwhile, in Pankaj Mishra’s Age of Anger, I came across Atatürk and his reforms under a different focus. An outstanding book which I recommend.
No problem! I may do a review of the book myself later on. It’s been a while since I read it but from what I remember, one part of it was mostly linguistic, which was not too interesting for me, but then he goes on to the language reform, which was the part I mostly focused on.
Thank you for the book recommendation. I’ll definitely check it out!
What is becoming clear in these posts is a history of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey from a Turkish perspective. As such they offer a Western European like myself with an invaluable perspective on a country of which I am clearly quite ignorant! Keep them coming Doga!
Thank you Dick! I appreciate it! I plan on continuing to write the articles, so we’ll see how it goes!
Thank you very much!
Thank you very much for reading it. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful.
Might also explain why the military was again and again involved in steering the Turkish state. Its somewhat unusual on the otherside of the Bosphorus
That’s a valid point. From the beginning of the 19th onwards, the military has been one of the key drivers of modernization, etc… for the Ottoman Empire. From there, it is not too far-fetched to argue that the military continued to play that role in modern Turkey and saw itself as the “guardian” of the Republic.
Interestingly, however, Mustafa Kemal was rather against mixing politics into the military. In fact, once the war was won in 1922 and he became the head of the state in 1923, you can rarely see him in a military uniform. He left his military identity behind and insisted on ruling the country as a “civilian.”
Very interesting. I saw a Turkish TV series a couple of years ago, called ‘Pera Palace’, which if I remember correctly touches slightly on this historic development. I thought it was very good and this is interesting.
Yes, I haven’t seen it myself but it was all the rage in Turkey, too for a while.