Titans of History

At the end of the war Atatürk found himself on the losing side. As many of the Arab lands once ruled by the Ottomans were distributed among the victorious Allies, he became involved with a national movement to create a modern nation out of the Turkish heartland of the defunct empire. British prime minister David Lloyd George and the Allies believed in a classically inspired Greek empire, assigned much of Anatolia (the Asian part of modern Turkey) to the Greeks, and encouraged its premier, Eleftherios Venizelos, to invade, thus launching a recklessly unnecessary war. Atatürk resisted ruthlessly and brilliantly, culminating in victory at the Battle of Dumlupinar in 1922—and the appalling atrocity of the Great Fire of Smyrna, in which Turkish troops were responsible for conflagration, rapine and murder, destroying one of Europe’s most cosmopolitan cities and killing 100,000 people. Commander-in-Chief Atatürk must bear some responsibility. Turkish independence was assured, however—confirmed in 1923 by the Treaty of Lausanne.

With the military struggle over, another challenge arose: to secure the modernization of a new secular Turkish state. In October 1923 the Republic of Turkey was declared, and Atatürk became president. As a nationalist, one of his first aims was to purge the country of foreign influence. As a progressive, his next priority was to separate the Islamic religion from the state.

The last Ottoman sultan had been deposed in 1922, and in 1924 Atatürk abolished the caliphate—the institution by which successive sultans had claimed rule over all Muslims. In place of an autocratic theocracy, Atatürk embraced, at least in theory, the principles of democracy and a legal code based on European models. Although Turkey remained a single-party state virtually without respite throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Atatürk tried to operate as an “enlightened authoritarian”—ruling without opposition but with a progressive and reforming agenda.

Economically, Turkey lagged behind much of the Western world in the 1920s. Atatürk set up state-owned factories and industries, built an extensive and efficient rail service, and established national banks to fund development. Despite the ravages of the Great Depression after 1929, Turkey resisted the moves toward fascist or communist totalitarianism that took hold elsewhere.

Atatürk declared that Turkey “deserves to become and will become civilized and progressive.” A major part of that drive was in the cultural and social field. The restrictions of Islamic custom and law were lifted. Women were emancipated—Mustafa Kemal’s adopted daughter became the world’s first female combat pilot—and Western dress was strongly encouraged, at times by official rules. Panamas and European hats replaced the traditional fez, which was banned by law. Education was transformed in towns and rural areas alike, and a new Turkish alphabet (a variant on the Roman alphabet) was introduced. Literacy levels rose from 20 percent to 90 percent.

Atatürk encouraged the study of earlier civilizations connected with the heritage of the Turkish nation. Art, sculpture, music, modern architecture, opera and ballet all flourished. In every area of Turkish life, Atatürk pressed forward his modernizing, nationalistic mission, and a new culture began to emerge. In the process he rode roughshod over non-Turkish minority groups, suppressing the Kurds, among others.

Dramatically good-looking, Atatürk was an eccentric leader, a vigorous womanizer and a heavy drinker. His Herculean workload combined with these prodigious appetites to bring about a collapse in his health, and in 1938 he died of cirrhosis of the liver. He was only fifty-seven. He was loved by his people for his charisma, his energy and his personable style, and his funeral brought forth a massive wave of grief across the country. His memory is still revered; today in Turkey there are portraits and sculptures of him everywhere, and it remains a crime to insult the visionary father of the nation, yet during the early 21st century, his fiercely secular order is increasingly challenged by the mildly Islamic rule of Prime Minister Erdogan.

PICASSO

1881–1973

Painting is not made to decorate apartments. It’s an offensive and defensive weapon

Pablo Picasso, in a letter (1945)