The Storyteller, Turkey, and A Few Road Signs

Turkey has arrived at a cultural crossroads that will determine what kind of a people the Turks will be in the future. To the unaccustomed eye of a foreigner just passing through, there are two big neon road signs, each pointing to diametrically different directions. “Secularists” says one sign, “Islamists” says the other. You can simplify this even more, and read the “Secularist” sign as “West”, and “Islamist” as “East”. It is usually agreed upon that the West leads to the European Union, the United States, Ataturk, the Turkish Army, progress, art, women’s rights, science and so forth. The East, on the other hand, is believed to lead to Iran, the Middle East, Islam, headscarves, the end of Kemalist Turkey, the comeback of the Ottomans…. This is an opportunity, or challenge, not many nations get, and whether Turks will make the most of it remains to be seen.
For the last one hundred years, Turks have redefined themselves in notable ways, and while the new society that emerged after the demise of the Ottoman Empire seemed very much Western, I believe this word has been overused over the years and reveals little about why it was the Turks who decided to ditch the Islamic values they held for hundreds of years. Why did Ataturk emerge in Turkey and not in other Islamist countries? Was he an anomaly, an exception, or a leader who appealed to th Turkish subconscious in some primal ways? If he were a true leader of the people, then why did he ask them to wear Western-style hats and change their alphabet from Arabic to Latin, rather then accepting them as who they were? It is true that Ataturk was unique in many ways – his upbringing, his vision, his rhetorical skills, his determination to stand against the West even though he was defined by the West as the Westernized Turk... Yet in many areas he was one of the people – this is why his reforms took such deep roots in such a short time. His staunchly secular, break-from-the-past, raise-from-your-own-ashes- way of thinking and doing things did appeal to the Turkish subconscious, mostly because he built an enormous social capital by leading a defeated people through a victorious Independence War, but also because Turks saw in him something they identified with easily in a time when Turks were no longer sure about who they were. Ataturk died too soon, and left behind a series of reforms that shaped the new Turkish socio-cultural landscape. If today many Turks no longer even know who the Ottomans were, and if for good or for bad they don’t even consider themselves as Ottomans, it is in no small part because of these reforms.
When Ataturk died in 1938, only 15 years after founding the Republic of Turkey, he left behind a legacy of a secular Turkey whose future lay ahead. I believe he did not leave expecting the Turkish people to idolize him, yet he fought for a cause, and his cause was a progressive, secular, powerful Turkey. 71 years after his death, Turkey is slowly beginning to forget who Ataturk was, and why his reforms were necessary. The issue of women’s rights is especially relevant in the face of a visible increase in the number of women choosing to wear headscarves. The headscarf issue, in itself not big enough to cause a cultural avalanche, is however a telltale sign of where Turkey is heading. When did these two irreconcilable Turkeys emerge? In a country divided by cultural fault lines, is there still hope for Ataturk’s Turkey? I do not like the term “Kemalist Turkey”, as I think it smells of ideology. Rather, I prefer Ataturk’s Turkey, because there is an innocence in it – the innocence of appointing the world's first woman supreme court justice, Firuzan Ikinciogullari. And the innocence of obtaining women’s suffrage in 1934, 10 years before women in France did.