Turkey is preparing to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of its Republic on Sunday October 29. A look back at a century of democracy from Mustafa Kemal to Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
On October 29, 2023, a hundred years ago, the Turkish Republic was proclaimed. It was born from the ashes of a gigantic empire, the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany during the First World War and which, after the defeat, was dismantled by the Allies, France, the United Kingdom or Italy. A humiliation that the nationalists do not accept. One man, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, took the lead in the revolt. In 1923, he became the liberator, the father of the Turks and the Republic was founded.
Kemal brought Turkey into modernity. He was turned towards the West, he gave women the right to vote and he advocated Turkish-style secularism, he is the religious subject to politics. He was also an authoritarian leader who transformed the country by force in barely ten years. The mufti’s call to prayer is no longer in Arabic, but in Turkish, Koranic schools close like religious courts. In the street, the traditional Ottoman fez is replaced by the top hat. The veil is prohibited in public spaces.
A Republic built in bloodbaths
Turkish nationalism is based on the idea of a united, homogeneous nation. Everything that could threaten this unity was crushed a few years before the proclamation of the Republic. In 1915, there was the Armenian genocide. Nearly a million and a half people were killed. In the years that followed, the spoliations and persecutions of Christians continued. In his struggle to gain power, Mustafa Kemal also surrounded himself with numerous genocidaires. The Kurds are also bloodily repressed, like the Alevis, Turkey’s Muslim minority.
Mustafa Kemal, like Recep Tayyip Erdogan a hundred years later, refuses to speak of the Armenian genocide. Even if the current Turkish president presented his condolences to the descendants of the victims, the taboo is still reproduced today on school benches. Erdogan and Kemal, the two figures of the Turkish Republic, have their authoritarianism in common, but have two different visions of Turkey. A secularist and Westernized Turkey for Kemal, and a reactionary, Islamist Turkey in confrontation with the West for Erdogan.
Erdogan also sees himself as a father of Turkey and wishes to mark history as his predecessor did. He dreams of the grandeur of the lost empire. He speaks of Turkey’s “heart borders” which include, he says, Syria or Iraq. He is a successor and competitor to Kemal, who despite everything retains a powerful and essential aura in Turkey.
Every year, on November 10, at the time of Mustafa Kemal’s death, the country pays tribute to him. For the hundred years of the Republic, however, the celebrations are not announced as extraordinary or breathtaking. There will still be parties in Istanbul, Ankara or Izmir with illuminations, fireworks and drone shows above the Bosphorus.