Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: The Enemy of Islam



Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: The Enemy of Islam

Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi


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Abstract

A brief history of the life and policies of one of the most vehement
enemies of Islam, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He 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
as 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.

Atatürk's Early Life

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 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]

Atatürk 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 Atatürk and 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.[6]

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 Atatürk, Riza 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 Atatürk imposed 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 Atatürk which 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 Atatürk; the 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 Atatürk more 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 Atatürk 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 Atatürk

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.


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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.


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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."


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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."


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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.



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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.


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Atatürk, 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.


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Atatürk, 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




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References

[1] H. C. Armstrong, The Grey Wolf (Capricorn Books, New York, 1961)

[2] Ibid., p. 227

[3] Ibid., pp. 199-200

[4] Ibid., p. 201

[5] Ibid., pp. 207-208

[6] Nuri Eren, Turkey Today and Tomorrow: An Experiment in
Westernization (Praeger, New York, 1963), pp. 100-102

[7] Ahmadi al-Aziz, Mustafa Kamal Ataturk: Ideologi Dan Kesan Ke Atas
Rakyat Turki (Usnie Publisher, 2002), p. 30

[8] As cited in ibid., p. 28

[9] H. C. Armstrong, Op. Cit., pp. 213-214

[10] Ibid., pp. 229-236

[11] John Bartlow Martin, Break Down The Walls: A Study of the Modern
American Prison (Ballantine Books, New York, 1953), pp. 259-261

[12] See Myron Weiner (ed.), Modernization: the Dynamics of Growth,
(Voice of America Forum Lectures, Washington D.C., 1966)

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