A brief history of the life and policies of one
of the most vehement enemies of Islam, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was the
founder of the secular Turkish state. It is an unfortunate thing that a
lot of his policies are still being practiced in Turkey till this day.
Women are still not allowed to wear the hijab in Government buildings
and schools a[s it is seen to be a sign of fundamentalism. I have
personally come across a group of Turks who shouted Bismillah ar-Rahman
ar-Rahim loudly before they all drink alcohol which is very much the
result of Kemalism. May God bless those who follow His path.
Ataturk's Early Life
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was born in 1881 in a shabby
quarter of Salonika. After resigning from his job as petty Government
clerk, his father, Ali Riza, twice failed in business, sought escape
from his miseries in alcohol and died of tuberculosis when Mustafa was
only seven years old. His mother, Zubaida, in strict purdah and entirely
illiterate, ruled the family. In contrast to her husband, she was a
devout believer and a pious Muslim. Like every other Turkish woman of
her day, her entire life centered round her eldest son. With her deep
religious convictions, Zubaida wanted him to become a pious scholar. But
the son had different ideas. He fought tooth and nail against any kind
of authority and was openly insolent and abusive to his teachers. He was
arrogant in the extreme in the presence of his fellow students and
refused to join the other boys in their games which made him justifiably
unpopular. If he were interfered with in any way, he fought them,
preferring to play alone. Once during one of these violent episodes, a
teacher, blind with fury, intervened and beat the boy so hard that his
honour was offended. Mustafa ran away and refused to return to the
school. When his devoted mother tried to plead with him, he stormed back
at her.
Zubaida was in despair, not knowing what to do.
Finally an uncle suggested sending him to the military cadet school in
Salonika and making a soldier of him. Since it was subsidized by the
government, it would cost them nothing; if the boy demonstrated ability,
he would become an officer; if not, he would at least remain a private.
In any case, his future livelihood was assured. Although Zubaida did not
approve, before she could stop him, twelve year old Mustafa persuaded
one of his father's friends to sponsor him with the college authorities.
He took the examination and passed as a cadet. Here, he found himself.
He was so successful academically that one of his teachers bestowed upon
him the name 'Kemal', which means in Arabic, "perfection." Because of
his brilliance in mathematics and his military subjects, he was promoted
to a teaching position on the staff where he much enjoyed flaunting his
authority. After obtaining the highest grades in his final examinations,
he graduated with honors in January 1905 with the rank of Captain.
During this period he joined a rabidly nationalistic
students society known as the Vatan or "Fatherland." The
members of the Vatan prided themselves on being revolutionaries. They
were bitterly hostile to the regime headed by Sultan Abdul Hamid II and
condemned him for his suppression of all so-called "liberal" ideas which
undermined the authority of Islam. They never wearied of blaming Islam
as responsible for Turkey's backwardness and vent their bitter spleen
upon the allegedly antiquated Shariah, and made the Sufi mystics the
object of special ridicule. The members of the Vatan were bound by oath
that they would oust the legitimate Sultan and replace him by a
Western-styled government complete with Constitution and parliament,
destroy the authority of the ulema or religious scholars, and abolish
purdah and the veil, declaring absolute equality between men and women.
Soon Mustafa Kemal became its chief.
Mustafa Kemal's opportunity for extending his
influence finally came when, just before the ousting of Sultan Abdul
Hamid in 1908 by the Young Turks, its ruling party, The Committee of
Union and Progress invited him to join them. However, being a
late-comer, he was obliged to carry out orders when his nature demanded
that either he control everything or take no part at all. He grew
increasingly restless and dissatisfied. He had no respect for the other
members whom he regarded as beneath his contempt. He particularly hated
such sincere Muslims as the Prime Minister, Prince Said Halim Pasha
(1865-1921) and the Minister of War, Anwar Pasha (1882-1922), with whom
he quarreled incessantly.
For the next ten years he distinguished himself in
the military profession as he was a born soldier and leader. Gradually
by dint of his domineering personality, combined with shrewdness, he
assumed more and more political influence. He spent his evenings in
secret meetings behind locked doors planning for the coup d'etat which
would give him absolute dictatorial power. His opportunity arose when at
the end of the First World War, he took the lead in defending the
territorial integrity of Turkey against the combined European powers who
were intent upon dismembering "the sick man of Europe" and hastening his
demise with all deliberate speed. By thwarting these sinister designs
and whipping up the enthusiasm of the populace to fight to the death for
their country, Mustafa Kemal Pasha became a national hero. When the
Greeks were defeated and Turkey's victory assured, the Turkish people
went delirious with joy. They hailed him as their Saviour and bestowed
upon him the honorific title 'Ghazi' or "Defender of the Faith".
Invitations from diplomats now overwhelmed him
urging him to become their champion of the East against the West. To the
Arab statesmen he replied in the State Assembly: "I am neither a
believer in a federation of all the nations of Islam nor even in a
league of all the Turkish peoples under Soviet rule. My only aim is to
safeguard the independence of Turkey within its natural frontiers - not
to revive the Ottoman or any other Empire. Away with dreams and shadows!
They have cost us dear in the past!"
To the Communist delegations seeking his support he
expressed himself even more bluntly:
There are no oppressors
nor any oppressed. There are only those who allow themselves to be
oppressed. The Turks are not among these. The Turks can look after
themselves. Let others do the same. We have - but one principle - to
see all problems through Turkish eyes and guard Turkish national
interests.1
Mustafa Kemal Pasha's declared policy was to make
Turkey within its natural frontiers a small, compact nation and, above
all, a prosperous, modern state respected by all the other nations of
the world. He was so convinced that he and he alone was qualified to
accomplish this task that he claimed:
I am Turkey! To destroy me
is to destroy Turkey!2
Atatturk destroys Islam
No sooner had he assumed power than he made bold to
declare that he would destroy every vestige of Islam in the life of the
Turkish nation. Only when the authority of Islam was utterly eliminated
could Turkey "progress" into a respected, modern nation . He made speech
after public speech, fearlessly and brazenly attacking Islam and all
Islam stands for:
For nearly five hundred
years, these rules and theories of an Arab Shaikh and the
interpretations of generations of lazy and good-for-nothing priests
have decided the civil and criminal law of Turkey. They have decided
the form of the Constitution, the details of the lives of each Turk,
his food, his hours of rising and sleeping the shape of his clothes,
the routine of the midwife who produced his children, what he
learned in his schools, his customs, his thoughts-even his most
intimate habits. Islam - this theology of an immoral Arab - is a
dead thing. Possibly it might have suited tribes in the desert. It
is no good for modern, progressive state. God's revelation! There is
no God! These are only the chains by which the priests and bad
rulers bound the people down. A ruler who needs religion is a
weakling. No weaklings should rule!3
When Abdul Majid was elected as Caliphate, Mustafa
Kemal Pasha refused to allow the full traditional ceremony to be
performed. When the Assembly met to discuss the matter, Mustafa Kemal
cut the debate short: "The Khalifa has no power or position except
as a nominal figurehead." When Abdul Majid wrote a petition for an
increase in his allowance, Mustafa Kemal replied thus:
The Khalifate, your office
is no more than an historical relic. It has no justification for
existence. It is a piece of impertinence that you should dare write
to any of my secretaries!4
On March 3, 1924, Mustafa Kemal presented a Bill to
the Assembly to oust the Caliphate permanently and establish the Turkish
nation as a purely secular state. However, before this Bill was even
introduced and made known, he had prudently made certain to muzzle all
opposition by declaring it a capital offence to criticize anything he
did:
At all costs, the Republic
must be maintained...The Ottoman Empire was a crazy structure based
upon broken religious foundations. The Khalifa and the remains of
the House of Usman must go. The antiquated religious courts and
codes must be replaced by modern scientific civil law. The schools
of the priests must give way to secular Government schools. State
and religion must be separated. The Republic of Turkey must finally
become a secular state.5
Consequently, the Bill was passed without debate and
the former Khalifa and his family exiled to Switzerland. The new regime
then enacted the following :
The preamble of the new (Turkish) Constitution
speaks of full dedication to the reforms of Ataturk. Article 153
prohibits any retrogression from these reforms. It said:
No provision of this Constitution shall be
construed or interpreted as rendering unconstitutional the following
reform laws which aim at raising Turkish society to the level of
contemporary civilization and at safeguarding the secular character
of the republic which were in effect on the date this constitution
was adopted by popular vote:
1. The law of the unification (and
secularization) of education of March 3, 1924
2. The Hat Law of November 25, 1925
3. The law on the closing down of dervish convents and
mausoleums and the abolition of the office of keepers of tombs
and the law on the abolition and prohibition of certain titles
of November 30, 1925
4. The conduct of the act of (civil) marriage of February 17,
1926
5. The law concerning the adoption of international numerals of
May 20, 1928
6. The law concerning the adoption and application, of (the
Latin letters for) the Turkish alphabet (and the banning of the
Arabic script) of November 1, 1928
7. The law on the abolition of titles and appellations such as
Efendi, Bey or Pasha, of November 26, 1934
8. The law concerning the prohibition against the wearing of
(indigenous) garments of December 3, 1934
Complete denial of Ataturkism remains impossible
and inconceivable. It is impossible because the Constitution
prohibits it and inconceivable because old and young have accepted
many of the consequences of the reforms and Westernization retains
its popular magic as the promise for a richer life.
During the period these reforms were being enforced,
Mustafa Kemal Pasha married a beautiful, European-educated lady named
Latifa, who, during the struggle for Turkey's independence, was
encouraged by him to dress like a man and demand for women absolute
equality. But the moment she grew self-assertive and insisted upon being
treated as a respectable wife instead of trampled upon like a doormat in
his unfaithfulness, he furiously divorced her, and sent her away. The
irony was that earlier, Kemal was responsible for annulling the Islamic
form of divorce, and yet he pronounced the talaaq when he
divorced his wife. A few months after his divorce, the anullment of the
Islamic divorce was lifted.7
After his divorce from Latifa, his shamelessness
knew no limits. He drank so heavily that he became a drunkard and a
confirmed alcoholic. Venereal disease wrecked his health. Handsome young
boys became objects of his lust and so aggressive was his behaviour
toward the wives and daughters of his political supporters that they
began sending their womenfolk as far as possible out of his reach.
Indeed, a close associate of Atat?iza Nur, observed that
Our respected leader has
one habit. He loves women. He has to change them rapidly. He must be
the chief court-taster.8
In describing his character, H. C. Armstrong writes:
Mustafa Kemal Pasha had
always been a lone man, a solitary, playing a lone hand. He had
trusted no one. He would not listen to opinions that were contrary
to his own. He would insult anyone who dared to disagree with him.
He judged all actions by the meanest motives of self-interest. He
was insanely jealous. A clever or capable man was a danger to be got
rid of. He was bitterly critical of any other man's ability. He took
a savage pleasure in tearing up the characters and sneering at the
actions even of those who supported him. He rarely said a kind or
generous thing and then only with a qualification that was a sneer.
He confided in no one. He had no intimates. His friends were the
evil little men who drank with him, pandered to his pleasures and
fed his vanity. All the men of value, the men who had stood beside
him in the black days of the War for Liberation were against him.9
And since no dictator can tolerate any rivals,
Mustafa Kemal Pasha lost no opportunity in crushing all political
opposition.
The secret police did
their work. By torture, bastinado, by any means they liked, the
police had to get enough evidence to incriminate the opposition
leaders who were all arrested. A Tribunal of Independence was
nominated to try them. Without bothering about procedure or
evidence, the court sentenced them to be hanged. The death warrants
were sent to Mustafa Kemal for his signature in his house at Khan
Kaya. Among the death warrants was one for Arif who, after a quarrel
with Mustafa Kemal, had joined the opposition. Arif, his one friend,
who had stood loyal beside him throughout all the black days of the
War for Independence - the only man to whom he had opened his heart
and shown himself intimately. One who was there reported that when
he came to this warrant the Ghazi's gray mask of a face never
changed; he made no remark; he did not hesitate. He was smoking. He
laid the cigarette across the edge of the ash-tray, signed the death
warrant of Arif as if it had been some ordinary routine paper and
passed on to the next.... He would do the thing properly. He would
give a ball at Khan Kaya that night also. Every one must come--the
judges, the Cabinet, the Ambassadors, the Foreign Ministers, all the
notables, all the beautiful ladies. All Ankara must celebrate.. ..
The dance began quietly.
Dressed in immaculate
evening dress cut for him by a London tailor, the Ghazi stood
talking in a corner to a diplomat. The guests moved cautiously
watching him. Until he showed his mood, they must step delicately
and talk in subdued tones; very dangerous to be merry if he happened
to be morose. But the Ghazi was in the best of spirits. This was to
be no staid state function. It was to be a night of rollicking fun.
"We must be gay! We must live, be alive!", he shouted as he caught
hold of a strange woman and fox-trotted on to the dance floor with
her. The guests one and all followed him. They danced - if they did
not, the Ghazi made them. The Ghazi was at his best, tearing his
partners around at a great pace and giving them drinks in between
the dance... Four miles away in Ankara the great square was lit up
with the white light of a dozen arc-lamps. Round it and into the
streets had collected a vast crowd. Under the arc-lamps below the
stone walls of the prison, stood eleven giant triangles of wood.
Under each was a man, his hands pinioned behind him and a noose
around his neck-the political opponents of Mustafa Kemal about to
die. In the great silence each of the condemned men spoke in turn to
the people. One recited a poem, another said a prayer and still
another cried out that he was a loyal son of Turkey... At Khan Kaya
most of the guests had gone.
The rooms were stale with
the stench of tobacco smoke, of spilt liquor and the foul breaths of
the intoxicated. The floors were littered with cigarette butts and
the tables strewn with cards and money. Mustafa Kemal walked across
the room and looked out of a window. His face was set and gray; the
pale eyes expressionless; he showed no signs of fatigue, his evening
clothes as immaculate as ever. The Commissioner of Police had
reported that the executions were finished. The bodies below the
triangles had ceased to twitch. At last he was supreme. His enemies
were banished, broken or dead.10
Meanwhile the rumble of opposition from the Turkish
people became a roar. The volcano finally erupted in 1926 when the
Kurdish tribes in the mountains staged an open revolt against the
Kemalist regime and all that it stood for. Mustafa Kemal lost no time in
taking action. Ruthlessly all Turkish Kurdistan was laid to waste;
villages were burned, animals and crops destroyed, women and children
raped and murdered. Forty-six of the Kurdish chiefs were sentenced to be
publicly hanged. The last to die was Shaikh Said, the leader. He turned
to the executioner and said: "I have no hatred for you. You and your
master, Mustafa Kemal, are hateful to God! We shall settle our account
before God on the Day of Judgment!"
Mustafa Kemal was now absolute Dictator. The Turkish
people accepted such anti-Islamic reforms as the banning of the fez
and turban, compulsory wearing of Western clothing, the Latin alphabet,
the Christian calendar and Sunday as legal holiday, only at a dagger's
point. Thousands of ulema and those who sympathized with them sacrificed
their lives rather than submit to the destruction of all they held
sacred. Nothing can be further from the truth than the delusion that the
Turkish people wanted any of this. The intensity of resistance can be
imagined from the fact that Atat?posed martial law nine times. So
despised is this Dictator by millions of Turks, particularly in the
villages and small towns, that the mere mention of his name is cursed.
In 1932 Mustafa Kemal decreed that every Turk must adopt a family name
as it is customary in Europe and America. He chose for himself Atat?ich
means "The Father of the Turks". Six years later, his health completely
ruined, he died of cirrhosis of the liver which is caused by alcoholism.
The category "psychopathic
personality" has been called the wastebasket of psychiatry. Into it
are dumped all those men who are not psychotic, not psychoneurotic,
not feeble minded-yet there is something very much wrong with them..
..The psychopath is not psychotic, not "insane." He knows where he
is and who he is and what time it is; he dwells in our world, not
the fantasy world of psychosis. But the psychopathic syndrome
engulfs his whole personality as much as psychosis. The psychopath
is not deficient in intelligence. Indeed he may be of above-average
intelligence. It is his emotions that are out of kilter, his moral
development, his "character." He is cold, remote, unreachable,
indifferent to the plight of others, even hostile. He "knows"
intellectually the consequences of his criminal acts to himself and
to his victims but he is unable to "feel" these consequences
emotionally and so he does not refrain from them. He never feels
remorse or shame. If he is a murderer captured, he is never sorry
that he killed but only that he got caught. He is the hired killer
for the mob; for him to kill is nothing. He rejects society. He
rejects any obligation to it....He is in perpetual rebellion. He
cannot form permanent emotional ties to anyone. His sex life is
random, chancy, for what he wants is sexual satisfaction and the
partner matters not....No reliable statistics exist on the number of
psychopaths incarcerated but nobody doubts that among them are the
most dangerous humans alive. That is why the prisons are filled with
them.11
Word for word, this is an accurate description of
the personality and character of Mustafa Kemal Atat?he only difference
is that instead of being recognized for what he was, as absolute
Dictator, nothing could inhibit him from committing his crimes on a
national scale.
None welcomed the dictatorship of Kemal Atat?re than
the intellectuals and politicians in America. The Jews among them
accorded him the most enthusiastic praise of all. How the traditions of
political freedom and democracy America claims to champion can be
reconciled with the atrocities committed under this Dictatorship is an
unsolved mystery until the reader understands that the democratic West
regards these human rights strictly for home-consumption. Under no
circumstances can they be exported to any Muslim land. Official
publications from the American Information Service did not hesitate to
support such authoritarian regimes so long as they were not openly
affiliated with the Communist bloc. Dictatorship, according to this
view, is justified if it effectively implements the modernization of the
country. The peoples of these "under-developed" places are too backward,
tradition-bound, ignorant and illiterate to be allowed to choose their
fate. Only the all-wise Government can decide what is best for them.
Westernization is the supreme virtue and no sacrifice of moral scruples
is too great to attain this end. Therefore any means, including the most
ruthless tyranny, is sanctioned with the full blessings of America and
the other Western democracies if it accelerates the disintegration of
the Islamic way of life.12
Conclusions
The fact that Kemal Ataturk laknatullah alaih
was a despot and dictator cannot be denied. It was his cruelty and
sadistic treatment of Muslims that makes him stand out as one of the
worst enemies of God. The above was only what was reported and recorded
by mostly Western observers. The extent of what actually went on in the
new Turkey by the direct policy of Kemal was heinous, to say the least.
He was truly an enemy of God to the core.
And only God knows best.
Appendix: Documentation On Ataturk
TIME
January 9, 1933, p. 64
Squinting skyward last week, Turks looked for the
new moon. When they should see it Ramadan would begin. Ramadan the
mystic month in which the Koran was revealed to Prophet Mohammed. This
year the first glint of the new moon had a special, dread significance.
Turks had been ordered by their stern dictator, Mustafa Kemal Pasha who
made them drop the veil and the fez (TIME, Feb. 15, 1926 et. seq.), that
beginning with Ramadan they must no longer call their god by his Arabic
name, Allah.
No godly man, Dictator Kemal considers that there is
no reason why Turks should not call Allah by his Turkish name Tanri.
There is no reason except centuries of tradition, no reason except that
Turkish imams (priests) all know the Koran by heart in Arabic while few
if any have memorized it in Turkish. Strict to the point of cruelty last
week was Dictator Kemal's decree that muezzins, calling the faithful to
prayer from the top of Turkey's minarets, must shout not the hallowed "Allah
Akbar!" (Arabic for "God is Great!") but the unfamiliar words "Tanri
Uludur!" which mean the same thing in Turkish. When imams
threatened to suspend services in the mosques and hide the prayer rugs,
the Government announced that it was holding 400 brand-new prayer rugs
in reserve, threatened to produce "newly trained muezzins who know the
Koran in Turkish and are ready to jump into the breach".
Nearer & nearer crept the moon to crescent. Ramadan
was almost upon Turkey when officials of the Department of Culture
(which includes religion) screwed up their courage and told Dictator
Kemal that he simply could not change the name of Turkey's god - at
least not last week. Already several muezzins had been thrown into jail
for announcing that they would continue to shout "Allah Akbar!" The
populace was getting ugly, obviously sympathized with the
Allah-shouters.
Abruptly Dictator Kemal yielded "Let them pray as
they please, temporarily" he growled. Beaming, his Minister rushed off
to proclaim the glad respite only a few hours before the new moon
appeared. "On account of the general unpreparedness of muezzins and
imams," they suavely declared, "prayers may be offered and the Koran
recited in Arabic during the present month of Ramadan, but discourse by
the imams must be in Turkish."
During Ramadan all Moslems are especially irritable
because they eat nothing during the hours of daylight. After the fasting
is over Turks will be more tractable, may accept from their Dictator a
new name for their God.
TIME
February 20, 1933, p. 18
Word for God
A hard father to his people, Mustafa Kemal told
his Turks last December that they must forget God in the Arabic
language (Allah), learn Him in Turkish (Tanri).
Admitting the delicacy of renaming a 1300-year-old god, Kemal gave
the muezzins a time allowance to learn the Koran in Turkish. Last
week in pious Brusa, the "green city", a muezzin halloed "Tanri
Uludur" from one of the minarets whence Brusans had heard "Allah
Akbar" since the 14th Century. Raging at Kemal Pasha's god, they
mobbed the muezzin, mobbed the police who came to save him. Quick to
defend his new word for God, quicker to show new Turkey the fate of
the old-fashioned, Kemal the Ghazi, "the Victorious One,"
pounced on Brusa, had 60 of the faithful arrested, ousted the Mufti
(ecclesiastical judge) of the Ouglubjami mosque and decreed that
henceforth God was Tanri.
TIME
February 15, 1926, pp. 15-16
"Turkey presents today the most promising and
challenging field on the face of the earth for missionary service."
Thus wrote James L. Barton, missionary executive, in last week's
issue of 'Christian Work.' But first he summarized the revolutionary
changes in Turkey since 1923. The changes: For a hundred years
Christian missionaries have struggled hopelessly to capture the
hearts of the Calif-awed Turks. They had come, said Mr. Barton, to
suspect that "the Moslem was outside the sphere of the operation of
divine grace."
Turkey
Emil Lengyel, 1941, pp. 140-141
During the early days of Kemal's career, many of
his followers were under the impression that he was a champion of
Islam and that they were fighting the Christians. "Ghazi,
Destroyer of Christians" was the name they gave him. Had thet been
aware of his real intentions, they would have called him "Ghazi,
Destroyer of Islam."
Grey Wolf, Mustafa Kemal: An Intimate
Study of a Dictator
H.C. Armstrong, 1934
He was drinking heavily. The drink stimulated
him, gave him energy, but increased his irritability. Both in
private and public he was sarcastic, brutal and abrupt. He flared up
at the least criticism. He cut short all attempts to reason with
him. He flew into a passion at the least opposition. He would
neither confide in nor co-operate with anyone. When one politician
gave him some harmless advice, he roughly told him to get out. When
a venerable member of the Cabinet suggested that it was unseemly for
Turkish ladies to dance in public, he threw a Koran at him and
chased him out of his office with a stick.
p. 241:
"For five hundred years these rules and theories
of an Arab sheik," he said, "and the interpretations of generations
of lazy, good-for-nothing priests have decided the civil and the
criminal law of Turkey."
"They had decided the form of the constitution,
the details of the lives of each Turk, his food, his hours of rising
and sleeping, the shape of his clothes, the routine of the midwife
who produced his children, what he learnt in his schools, his
customs, his thoughts, even his most intimate habits.
"Islam, this theology of an immoral Arab, is a
dead thing." Possibly it might have suited tribes of nomads in the
desert. It was no good for a modern progressive State.
"God's revelation!" There was no God. That was
one of the chains by which the priests and bad rulers bound the
people down.
"A ruler who needs religion to help him rule is
a weakling. No weakling should rule.."
And the priests! How he hated them. The lazy,
unproductive priests who ate up the sustenance of the people. He
would chase them out of their mosques and monasteries to work like
men.
Religion! He would tear religion from Turkey as
one might tear the throttling ivy away to save a young tree.
p. 243:
Further, it was public knowledge that he was
irreligious, broke all the rules of decency, and scoffed at sacred
things. He had chased the Sheikh-ul-Islam, the High Priest of Islam,
out of his office and thrown the Koran after him. He had forced the
women in Angora to unveil. He had encouraged them to dance body
close to body with accursed foreign men and Christians.
Turkey
Emil Lengyel, 1941, p. 134
Kemal cared nothing about Allah; he was
interested in himself and in Turkey. He hated Allah and made him
responsible for Turkey's misfortune. It was Allah's tyrannical rule
that paralyzed the hands of the Turk. But he knew that Allah was
real to the Turkish peasant, while nationalism meant nothing to him.
He decided, therefore, to draft Allah into his service as the
publicity director of his national cause. Through Allah's aid his
people must cease to be Mohammedans and become Turks. Then, after
Allah had served Kemal's purpose, he could discard him.
Ataturk: The Rebirth of a Nation
Lord Kinross, 1965
p. 437:
For Kemal, Islam and civilization were a
contradiction in terms. "If only," he once said of the Turks, with a
flash of cynical insight, "we could make them Christians!" His was
not to be the reformed Islamic state for which the Faithful were
waiting: it was to be a strictly lay state, with a centralized
Government as strong as the Sultan's, backed by the army and run by
his own intellectual bureaucracy.
p. 470:
The cleavage in his musical tastes emerged in
Istanbul, where he once had two orchestras, one Turkish and one
European, brought to the Park Hotel. He listened with constant
interruptions, commanding one to stop and the other to play in turn.
Finally, as the raki took effect, he lost patience and rose to leave
the restaurant, saying, "Now if you like you can both play
together". Another evening, incensed by the sound of the muezzin
from a mosque opposite, which clashed with the dance-band, he
ordered its minaret to be felled - one of those orders which was
countermanded next morning.
Ataturk: The Rebirth of a Nation
Lord Kinross, 1965
p. 365:
Some confusion as to his identity persisted,
however, for some years to come. Inspecting some soldiers in
Anatolia, Kemal once asked, "Who is God and where does He live?"
The soldier, anxious to please, replied, "God is
Mustafa Kemal Pasha. He lives in Angora."
"And where is Angora?" Kemal asked.
"Angora is in Istanbul," was the reply.
Farther down the line he asked another soldier,
"Who is Mustafa Kemal?"
The reply was, "Our Sultan."
- Irfan Orga: Phoenix Ascendant
