SITREP: Situation in Republic of Turkey: Do Not Lose Important Ally Over Misinformation

The Republic of Turkey [Turkeii] has been an important ally since after World War II. During WWII it was able to remain relatively neutral. It became a republic after Mustafa Kemal (Kemal Atatürk – literally “Father of Turkey) became its first national leader as a republic and without a brutal war of independence against Greece, Great Britain and France. The best biography written by the West was authored by a British officer who fought against General Kemal, later known as Ataturk. The title being: ATATÜRK: The Rebirth of a Nation written by Lord Patrick Kinross whose first page in the prologue reads:

Mustafa Kemal, later Kemal Atatürk, was an outstanding soldier-statesman of the first half of the twentieth century. He differed from the dictators of his age in two significant respects: his foreign policy was based not on expansion but on retraction of frontiers; his home policy on the foundation of a political system which could survive his own time. It was in this realistic spirit that he regenerated his country, transforming the old sprawling Ottoman Empire into a compact new Turkish Republic. … Vain of popular acclaim he was not. … “I don’t act for public opinion. I act for the nation and for my own satisfaction.” …he loved his country. …
It was a restless mind, nurtured on those principles of Western civilization which had influenced Turkish liberal thought since the nineteenth century; continually refueled by ideas of others, which he adapted and adopted as his own; but always grounded in a common sense of mistrustful of theory.

For those of you who cannot obtain a copy of this biography, there are the CIA World Fact Book and Wikipedia entries – Republic of Turkey as a nation and the History of the Republic of Turkey. There are other resources at the Bibliography below.

New York Times, Travel article:

Modern Turkey began in 1923, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a Turkish army commander-turned-statesman, whose radical secular revolution changed Turkish society forever. In a series of reforms beginning in the 1920s, Atatürk, whose portraits are still commonly displayed, burned all bridges with Turkey’s religious and imperial Ottoman past, shutting down religious orders, doing away with Islamic courts, religious instruction in schools, removing the caliphate, changing the Ottoman script, a mix of Arabic and Persian, to Latin letters, and rewriting criminal and civil law based on European legal codes.
Democracy came to Turkey in the 1940s, when the Turkish state allowed a multiple party system. Since then, the Turkish military, an elite, westernized institution that sees itself as the protector of Atatürk’s legacy, deposed three elected governments, and executed a prime minister, Adnan Menderes, who headed Turkey’s first opposition party. …

Violent as it may seem when first starting the Republic and later when it became a fledgling democracy, Turkish peoples tried to live in peace with open mind with its neighbors, and despite their secular government remain faithful to the Islamic religion as Muslims.

In Ernest Wolf-Gazo’s essay on Journal of American Studies of Turkey …

One of the great philosophers and educators of the 20^th century, the American John Dewey, visited the newly established Republic of Turkey in the summer of 1924. This article deals with that visit, made on the invitation of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, first president and founder of the Turkish Republic. The visit was not intended as an analogy to Plato’s visit to Sicily in order to materialize his utopian dream; Dewey was not a utopian and neither was his host. Turkey had just barely survived a brutal war of independence against Greece, Great Britain and France. What remained of the original Ottoman Empire was its heartland, Anatolia, with its new capital, the ancient village of Ancyra, now known as Ankara. I intend to discuss the significance of Dewey’s almost forgotten educational mission to Ankara, now a modern city in the heart of Turkey. …
Atatürk invited Dewey in order to receive advice that would provide ideas for reforms and recommendations benefiting the Turkish educational system and propelling it towards a modern educational establishment. He must have been fully aware of Dewey’s stature and significance in the United States. Dewey had gained world-wide recognition, although a little less in an elite-conscious Europe, for his progressive education project conducted in Chicago. … Progressive meant the battle against a classical curriculum, entertained in elite institutions of Europe for the children of the elite. Progressive also meant the reformation of a classical curriculum towards educating the majority, the citizens of a country contributing to the basic foundation of a democratic society. The most essential element for a democratic society was seen to be the literacy of the masses, boys and girls alike, for without literacy democracy is not possible. It was on that common that Dewey met Atatürk in the summer of 1924 in Ankara.
The illiteracy among the Turkish populace in the 1920s was quite high. … The German-British sociologist Sir Ralf Dahrendorf once described the situation in the United States as a social experiment that was an “applied enlightenment.” …
In the old Near East – as in all traditional societies – religious authority, i.e., the Ulema, used to control educational institutions and programs. The Ottoman Empire was the first Near Eastern land that pioneered educational reforms initiated in the latter part of the 18^th century. The contact with France was paramount (Göçek). It was no accident that Rosseau’s father, a Swiss watchmaker, spent some time in the old Pera, the European quarters of ýstanbul (Constantinople). …
In 1913, the most important legislative act affecting modern elementary education since 1869 was passed. …
Before Dewey arrived in Turkey he had already been on educational missions in Japan and China. … Of course, history did not stand still, especially in Turkey. On 9 October 1923, Angora became Ankara, the capital of Turkey, on 29 October, the same year, the Turkish Republic was proclaimed, with Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) as its first president. On 23 March 1924, the Caliphate was abolished, and on 18 April of the same year the evkaf was. Also abolished was the periapt, replaced by the Swiss civil code in 1926. Finally, the Republic of Turkey was declared a secular state in 1937. …
The year 1924, the year of Dewey’s visit to the newly established Republic of Turkey, was a dramatic year in general, as much as for educational reforms. A law for Unification of Instruction unified the entire Turkish school system. This meant that all educational institutions were placed under the control of the Ministry of Education. Private and foreign schools, as well as the medrese and its waaf ministry, were eliminated. Furthermore, co-education was introduced at the ministry level during the academic year 1923-1924. No doubt, this law, as well as others in due time, was to be a part of a vast legalistic promotion to secularize Turkey. … Dewey promoted modernization in education … He has this to say in the “Report”:

“…While Turkey needs unity in its educational system, it must be remembered that there is a great difference between unity and uniformity, and that a mechanical system of uniformity may be harmful to real unity. The central Ministry should stand for unity, but against uniformity and in favor of diversity. Only by diversification of materials can schools be adapted to local conditions and needs and the interest of different localities be enlisted. Unity is primarily an intellectual matter, rather than an administrative and clerical one. It is to be attained by so equipping and staffing the central Ministry of Public Instruction that it will be the inspiration and leader, rather than dictator, of education in Turkey.” [281]

Certainly, these remarks are as timely for Turkey in the 1990s, as they were in Atatürk’s time. …
Dewey returned to the United States from Turkey in mid-September 1924. And it may be said that few made, within such a short span of time, a more lasting and substantial contribution to the Turkish nation than Dewey in educational matters.

Fast forward to the Armenia problem that was compounded by an earthquake in 1988. [Wikipedia]

According to a BBC News report, dated February 27^th 2007, entitled Turkey’s Armenian Dilemma …

“The more foreign parliaments insist that our forebears committed crimes against humanity, the less likely anybody in Turkey is to face up to the hardest moments in history.”
…In recent years, liberal Turkish scholars have expressed the hope that membership, or even prospective membership of the European Union, will give the country enough confidence to discuss the Armenian tragedy without threatening those who use the “g-word” with prosecution.
Skeptics may retort that in recent years, things have been moving in the opposite direction: the revised Turkish penal code and its preamble, adopted in 2005, make even more explicit the principle that people may be prosecuted if they “insult Turkishness” – a crime which, as the preamble makes clear, includes the assertion that the Ottoman Armenians suffered genocide.

Others have claimed that Turkey must deal with its pre-Republic history and then ensure that it is not repeated in the future. However, the Europeans in their stuffiness when it comes to allowing the gateway between the East and the West be allowed membership is a big mistake as well. Remember the results of German persecution for the actions of Prussians in World War I, which culminated into a terrible economic recession and then depression, which of course, was occurring around the world and more so in Germany where a duffle bag full of German Marks would purchase one US dollar. The end result was an open door to a man named Adolf Hitler who would use this vendetta against other European nations and their reasoning against its prosperity (prosperity equals aggression), instead of providing a close and nurturing diplomacy. This was the major foreign policy fault of the ministry in Great Britain prior to Winston Churchill’s election, as well as the pompous attitude of France, where the Armistice was signed and eventually Hitler triumphed by France surrendering to German occupation in the same rail car. Thus, it has been feared that Turkish pride would result in a government and nation that would not ensure peace through internal strength, but instead aggression. They are making the same mistake twice.

Part of the problem is the age old enemy of Turkey – Greece, which has not forgiven them for becoming a republic out of the ashes of the falling Ottoman Empire – the culprit of the genocide of which the Republic of Turkey continues to deny or at least admit to in its pre-Republic history. One must also remember that during the year of 1988 Turks and Armenians died in a devastating earthquake at the hand of Mother Nature who bears no prejudice against race, creed, gender or age when it comes to earthquakes and other natural disasters. …

A campaign of violence launched by Armenian militants in the 1970s, who mainly attacked Turkish diplomatic targets and claimed over 50 lives, raised hackles even higher. …
The sultan and foreign minister were at pains to reassure the British of their determination to punish the perpetrators of these atrocities, and they held four big and revealing trials whose proceedings were published in the government gazette. In April 1919, a local governor, Mehmed Kemal, was found guilty and hanged for the mass killing of Armenians in the Ankara district. …after May 1919, when Greek troops were authorized by the victorious Entente powers to occupy the Aegean port of Izmir and, in another part of Anatolia, Mustafa Kemal – later known as Atatürk – began his campaign to make the Turks masters in their own land. …
The atrocities against the Armenians were committed by an Ottoman government, albeit a shadowy sub-section of that government. There is no logical reason why a new republican administration, established in October 1923 in an act of revolutionary defiance of Ottoman power, should consider itself responsible for things done under the previous regime. In fact, when the nationalist movement was founded in 1919, the climate of revulsion over the sufferings of the Armenians was so general that even the neo-nationalists were keen to distinguish themselves from the CUP. …
The very fact that the Turkish republic bears no formal responsibility for eliminating the Armenian presence in eastern Anatolia … has given some Turkish historians a flicker of hope: one day, the leaders of the republic will be able to face up to history’s toughest questions about the Armenians, without feeling that to do so would undermine the very existence of their state.

All one can view historically are the dates of the occurrence and who was involved, which was definitely the Ottoman Empire that no longer exists – and the revolution against it because of its policy against Armenians and Turks alike.

…and a new, post-nationalist attitude to history that will prevail if and when Turkey secures a place in Europe. That makes perfect psychological sense, even if the immediate prospects for a move from phase two to phase three do not look very bright. [Bruce Clark, news editor of Economist newspaper]

Briefly this has been an oversight of the situation, historically – something that must be resolved, especially with Turkey thinking about becoming a non-secular state government or at least partially so. They are caught between loyalty to their Muslim religion of Islam and the misconception or misunderstanding of the term “moderate” Muslims, as they have been called. Here we have a classic misunderstanding between cultures, and this makes me sad. And this is the views of a poll of about 80% Turks being resentful by being called “moderate” Muslims. Not meant to be “moderate” in their faith, but not belonging to the faction of hate and violence.

In the 1980s, Senator Dole had initiated at the request of Armenian Americans to legislate a bill that would allow the building of an Armenian genocide statue or memorial in the United States. It clearly had no business of government using taxpayer money to put up a monument concerning foreign affairs or circumstance; however, the Turks, misunderstood greatly this gesture and the public outcry coming from the Americans to not pass the legislation. The result was that Turkey put a boycott on Dole pineapple plantations and corporation – not realizing that Senator Dole was not affiliated at all with that business entity. The damage had been done by the time it was discovered of the diplomatic mistake. The importance of cultural understanding and factual information is a key factor here, and this further delayed their long quest to become part of the European Union. A key element in commercial and economic success in the Republic of Turkey, in trading especially; Americans should endeavor to reach out through diplomatic channels and create once again understanding between the cultures of Turks and Americans – unified against the common cause against Islamic fundamentalism.

The Armenians are not “lying” they are just as misinformed as the Turks and the Americans. Misinformation can cause so much grief, misery and violence. We must be like Dewey and reach out across the diplomatic lines and educate the populace in America, Armenia territory, as well as in Turkey. It would be sad to lose such a valuable friend and partnership over misunderstanding. Recently the other problem is with the militant Kurds in northern Iraq, forcing the hand of the Turkish military.

Bibliography:

Pre-Republic History – Spiritus Temporis
Turkey Travel Guide – Wikipedia
Crisis in Turkey: the Conflict of Political Languages – Goliath Collection of Essays
Turkish Kurds – Hauserbeiten
Prose of the Republic of Turkey, National Literature – Wikipedia
John Dewey in Turkey: An Educational Mission – Ernest Wolf-Gazo
Armenia – Wikipedia
Turkey’s EU Bid and the Armenian Problem – EU Centre
Turkey’s Armenian Dilemma – BBC News