«Lenin is more alive now than anyone else» — this propaganda saying, widely used in the late USSR, was intended to emphasize the immutability of Leninist postulates in the country even after the death of its leader. However, as we know, shortly after that Leninism itself ordered a long life together with the country it created — the Soviet Union.
The same cannot be said about the case and legacy of Vladimir Lenin’s foreign policy ally, Mustafa Kemal, known as Atatürk, who simultaneously created a new state on the ruins of the old one.
The pompous events that took place in Turkey over the weekend to commemorate the 81st anniversary of his death vividly demonstrated that despite the departure of its founder into another world, Kemalism is «more alive than anybody else» in Turkey today. The mausoleum of the founder of the Republic of Turkey, which was surrounded by military personnel and ordinary people, was visited by leading representatives of the country’s political establishment, including Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The current leader of the Republic of Turkey delivered a memorable speech in the mausoleum and made a corresponding entry in the visitors’ book: «On the 81st anniversary of his death, we honor the memory of the founder of the Republic of Turkey, the first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with deep respect. The memory of Atatürk and his comrades, as well as all the heroes who have fought for our country for thousands of years, will forever be cherished in the hearts of the Turkish people. We will continue to work tirelessly to strengthen and develop the Republic, which is the legacy of Ataturk. The Republic of Turkey will live for centuries to come.»
For many of our readers, this attitude towards the cult of Kemal by Erdogan, whom they perceive as his destroyer, will certainly come as an unpleasant surprise. For us, however, it has long ceased to be a surprise, albeit an unpleasant one. Although we were among the first to hope that Erdogan would be able to put an end to the cult of Kemal in the revived Islamic Turkey (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=17765), it became clear to us two years ago that these hopes were in vain (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=33230).
In general, it should be understood that neither Erdogan nor his party have ever been open opponents of Kemal, because a political force with such an attitude towards the founder of the Republic of Turkey had no chance to act legally and come to power. But the party’s attitude towards him has certainly changed over time. For a long time, the official diplomatic language and the mimicry of the party leaders concealed the hostile attitude towards Kemal, if not of the majority, then of a significant part of its members, including quite high-ranking ones.
The funeral of Kemal’s fierce critic Kadır Misiroğlu, about which we wrote (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=36418), became a kind of review of these forces, but it also showed their relative insignificance compared to the rest of society and the respectful distance of the party’s top representatives from their standard-bearer.
We are not the only ones to have written about the reasons for this shift. Many observers see a failed but still significant consequence of the coup as a kind of turning point between two eras. The result of the coup was Erdogan’s rejection of the romantic neo-Ottomanism associated with former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and his alliance with nationalist circles in both the political and security spheres. For nationalist circles, Kemal’s authority is unshakable, and therefore Erdogan had to change his attitude towards him from neutral-cold to pompously respectful.
Of course, Erdogan’s Kemalism and that of his allies are not the same as the Kemalism of the ideological Kemalists of the old school. Erdogan’s Kemalism is, as it were, in the spirit of postmodernism, a combination of incompatible concepts, an «Islamic Kemalism,» that is, a Kemalism purified of its anti-Islamic orientation-something like «orthodox Stalinism» or «orthodox Leninism» in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
In fact, Kemalism in this variety amounts to the acceptance of the main results of Kemal’s policies — the Turkish nation-state and the Turkish political nation, which emerged and established itself on the ruins of the Ottoman Caliphate alongside other national states and political nations (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=37488). Whether we like it or not, this is the reality with which we will apparently have to reckon for a long time to come…