Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Exposed As An Ene­my of Islam

NB : A brief his­to­ry of the life and poli­cies of one of the most vehe­ment ene­mies of Islam, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was the founder of the sec­u­lar Turk­ish state. It is an unfor­tu­nate thing that a lot of his poli­cies are still being prac­tised in Turkey until 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. May God bless those who fol­low His path.

Ear­ly Life

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was born in 1881 in a shab­by quar­ter of Saloni­ka. After resign­ing from his job as a 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, Zübeyde, 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 cen­tred around her eldest son. With her deep reli­gious con­vic­tions, Zübeyde 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 school. When his devot­ed moth­er tried to plead with him, he stormed back at her.

Zübeyde 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. 

Mil­i­tary Career

Although Zübeyde 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 hon­ours 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 régime 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 an 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 quar­relled incessantly.

For the next ten years, Mustafa Kemal Pasha 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’é­tat which would give him absolute dic­ta­to­r­i­al power. 

A Nation­al Hero

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

Mustafa Kemal Pasha declared pol­i­cy that 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 !ibid., p. 227

Abol­ish­ing The Caliphate

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 a 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 !ibid., pp. 199 – 200

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 a his­tor­i­cal rel­ic. It has no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for exis­tence. It is a piece of imper­ti­nence that you should dare write to any of my sec­re­taries !ibid., p. 201

On March 3, 1924, Mustafa Kemal Pasha 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.ibid., pp. 207 – 208 

Con­se­quent­ly, the Bill was passed with­out debate and the for­mer Caliph and his fam­i­ly exiled to Switzer­land. Through a series of high­ly con­tro­ver­sial and Machi­avel­lian manoeu­vres, Ataturk was, in the end, suc­cess­ful in get­ting the Caliphate abolished :

“Although lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives alike in the assem­bly increas­ing­ly argued ​‘in favour of the Caliph play­ing an impor­tant role in what­ev­er polit­i­cal sys­tem ulti­mate­ly was estab­lished,’ they were under­mined by polit­i­cal intim­i­da­tion (for exam­ple, the bru­tal mur­der of a vocal pro-caliphate assem­bly mem­ber in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal’s lead body­guard), Mustafa Kemal’s mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the 1920 High Trea­son Law on April 15, 1923, (mak­ing it crime to cam­paign for the return of the sul­tanate broad­ly defined, i.e., any tem­po­ral pow­er for the caliph), and his adroit arrange­ments for a more loy­al sec­ond assem­bly. Fol­low­ing the iso­la­tion of the army polit­i­cal­ly and dur­ing an absence of high­ly regard­ed oppo­si­tion fig­ures from Ankara, the rest of the per­son­al­ly vet­ted assem­bly moved on March 4, 1924, to abol­ish the Ottoman Caliphate along with the reli­gious foun­da­tions of law and edu­ca­tion. The cen­turies-old insti­tu­tion was struck down by a leg­isla­tive act of the Grand Nation­al Assem­bly, and all mem­bers of the Ottoman dynasty were expelled from the new­ly formed Turk­ish Repub­lic.” Mona Has­san, Long­ing for the Lost Caliphate : A Tran­sre­gion­al His­to­ry (Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2016), pp. 12 – 13

The new régime then enact­ed the following :

The pre­am­ble of the new (Turk­ish) Con­sti­tu­tion speaks of full ded­i­ca­tion to the reforms of Ataturk. 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 civil­i­sa­tion and at safe­guard­ing the sec­u­lar char­ac­ter of the repub­lic which was 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.Nuri Eren, Turkey Today and Tomor­row : An Exper­i­ment in West­ern­iza­tion (Praeger, New York, 1963), pp. 100 – 102

Kemal Pasha Sec­u­laris­es Turkey

Atatürk and his col­leagues even want­ed to Turk­i­fy Islam. They ordered the Mus­lims to use the Turk­ish word ​“Tan­ri” instead of Allah for God and use the Turk­ish lan­guage in the salah (the Mus­lim dai­ly prayers) and adhaan (the call to prayers). 

These pre­pos­ter­ous changes deeply dis­turbed the faith­ful Mus­lims and caused wide­spread resent­ment, which led in 1933 to a return to the Ara­bic ver­sion of the call to prayer.

After some time, the Atatürk régime moved towards more extreme mea­sures. Ataturk pro­hib­it­ed reli­gious edu­ca­tion. The exist­ing mosques were turned into muse­ums or used for the régime’s sec­u­lar purposes.

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 annul­ment of the Islam­ic divorce was lift­ed.Ahma­di al-Aziz, Mustafa Kamal Ataturk : Ide­olo­gi Dan Kesan Ke Atas Raky­at Tur­ki (Usnie Pub­lish­er, 2002), p. 30

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 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk observed that :

Our respect­ed leader has one habit. He loves women. He has to change them rapid­ly. He must be the chief court-taster.As cit­ed in ibid., p. 28

Atatürk The Absolute Dictator

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.H. C. Arm­strong, op. cit., pp. 213 – 214

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 grey 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. Every­one 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 were 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 grey ; 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.ibid., pp. 229 – 236

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 régime 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 an 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 a 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 Ataturk 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 the sur­name ​“Ataturk”, which means ​“The Father of the Turks”.

Death of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

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

Word for word, this is an accu­rate descrip­tion of the per­son­al­i­ty and char­ac­ter of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The only dif­fer­ence is that instead of being rec­og­nized for what he was, as an absolute dic­ta­tor, noth­ing could inhib­it him from com­mit­ting his crimes on a nation­al scale.

None wel­comed the dic­ta­tor­ship of Kemal Ataturk 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.See Myron Wein­er (ed.), Mod­ern­iza­tion : the Dynam­ics of Growth (Voice of Amer­i­ca Forum Lec­tures, Wash­ing­ton D.C., 1966)

Con­clu­sions

The fact that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk 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. Ataturk was tru­ly the ene­my of Islam. 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 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Kemal­ism was heinous, to say the least. 

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was tru­ly an ene­my of God and Islam, to the core. And only God knows best. 

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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. 

---

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. 

---

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.” 

---

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 they 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 the body with accursed for­eign men and Christians. 

---

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. 

Ataturk : 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. 

---

Ataturk : 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 Ascen­dent.

---

When Kemal Ataturk Recit­ed She­ma Yisrael
​“It’s My Secret Prayer, Too,” He Confessed
By Hil­lel Halkin, ​“For­ward” mag­a­zine, New York, Jan­u­ary 28 1994

ZICHRON YAAKOV — There were two ques­tions I want­ed to ask, I said over the phone to Batya Keinan, spokes­woman for Israeli pres­i­dent Ezer Weiz­man, who was about to leave the next day, Mon­day, Jan. 24, on the first vis­it ever made to Turkey by a Jew­ish chief of state. One was whether Mr Weiz­man would be tak­ing part in an offi­cial cer­e­mo­ny com­mem­o­rat­ing Kemal Ataturk.

Ms Keinan checked the pres­i­den­t’s itin­er­ary, accord­ing to which he and his wife would lay a wreath on Ataturk’s grave the morn­ing of their arrival, and asked what my sec­ond ques­tion was.

“Does Pres­i­dent Weiz­man know that Ataturk had Jew­ish ances­tors and was taught Hebrew prayers as a boy?”

“Of course, of course,” she answered as unsur­pris­ed­ly as if I had inquired whether the pres­i­dent was aware that Ataturk was Turkey’s nation­al hero.

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