Paul Henze is a Resident Consultant in the Washington office of RAND. He headed the Nationality Working Group in the National Security Council, 1977-1980. He spent 30 years in U.S. Government and government-related positions including Radio Free Europe, and American Embassies in Turkey and Ethiopia.
Great men are usually judged by their accomplishments. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s accomplishments were many. His enduring monument, the democratic, economically dynamic Republic of Turkey has celebrated its 75th anniversary this year. Even though he has been dead for 60 years, most Turks still respect Ataturk as the leader who set them on the path to recall other 20th century leaders whose achievements and reputation have endured so well. Dozens are despised for the dead ends into which they led their people:
Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Horthy, Nasser, Nkrumah, Toure, Peron, Franco, Castro. Cheered by claques of American and European admirers, these and lesser men like them succumbed to fashionable fads, developed messiah complexes, and unleashed violence to have their way both at home and abroad. The damage they did to their people, their countries, and to others was enormous and lasting. Ataturk avoided the traps so many of his contemporaries fell into:
Virulent Nationalism
Ataturk welded the backward heartland of a once-powerful empire into a nation. He made his people proud to be called Turks, encouraged them to be conscious of their past, and persuaded them that they could have a great future, but he avoided the kind of hateful and aggressive nationalism that infected all of Eastern Europe between the wars and bedevils the Balkans still, to say nothing of the Arab world. Ataturk did not educate Turkish youth to hate neighbouring peoples. He ruled out irredentism and banned groups eager for foreign adventures. He insisted that Turks content themselves with the territory recognized in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 and seek no more.
Imperial Restoration
Ataturk gave no thought to restoring the Ottoman Empire. He turned his back on the Empire’s old territories the south and east and claimed no entitlement to represent the Turks of the Balkans, the Caucasus, or Central Asia. He felt Turks had enough to do developing the land they had. He worked out a settlement with his Greek counterpart Venizelos which led to a humane exchange of populations under international supervision. He accepted international decisions on Mosul and the Hatay. While Mussolini tried to establish a new Roman Empire and brutalized Ethiopia, Ataturk wasted no young men’s lives in imperial misadventures. Hitler’s irredentism, racism, and anti-Semitism disgusted Ataturk. His appeal to Turks to be proud, industrious, and confident was not a call to racial arrogance.
Utopian Economics
The new Turkey had little outside help in developing and modernizing. In the 1920s and 30s there was no world Bank, no IMF, no UNDP or other international bodies giving money and advice. Advanced countries did not have economic aid programs. Ataturk’s Turkey had to lift itself by its own bootstraps. Ataturk had to resort to governmental initiative, he built a system of the state economic enterprises, but he did not idealize them or develop a body of dogma to justify their dominance. Socialism, corporatism, and other fashionable economic doctrines had no fascination for him. He accepted small amounts of aid from the Soviet Union but was wary of imitating the Soviet system. Private enterprise expanded in Ataturk’s Turkey to the point where half the country’s GDP was being generated by the private sector at the time of his death. It remains the basis of the prosperity that Turkey enjoys today.
Violence
Terror became a political habit for Lenin and his associates as soon as they seized power. Lesser communist leaders imitated him ever after Stalin carried terror to extremes later exceeded only by Mao Zedong and Pol Pot. Hitler used terror as a tool for managing his own society as well as countries he conquered. Violence, though endemic in the traditional society he inherited, did not appeal to Ataturk. He did not turn classes against each other. He made no mass arrests, established no concentration camps, did not herd peasants into collective farms. People did not have to flee from Ataturk’s Turkey. Instead, a small but steady stream of refugees from communism found asylum there as did Jews fleeing Hitler. Ataturk did not use assassination against opposition. He sanctioned extreme measures rarely and only in face of rebellion or treason. He recognized the value of the rule of law and equality of citizens before the law. The fundamental reforms Ataturk introduced into Turkish life were implemented by persuasion and example, not to brute force. He was firm in principle, patient in method. Many of his reforms were not fully implemented until a generation or more after his death.
Glorification of the Military
Though a military man with a distinguished record, Ataturk did not elevate the military above the rest of society. He took off his uniform when he became head of state and insisted that all other officers do the same on assuming civilian roles. His government was in no sense a military government of the kind that has been so prevalent in the 20th century. In Atataturk’s Turkey military men had more responsibilities than privileges. They were taught to be examples of sacrifice and dedication for the sake of the country’s basic aims-to rise to the level of Western civilization. They were made trustees-guardians –of the republic but were cautioned to act only when the republic was clearly in danger and then step aside.
Idolization of Leadership and Power
Ataturk was a dictator, but he did not idealize dictatorship or institutionalize it as a governing method. He did not claim to be infallible. He did not claim to be establishing a new universal doctrine. He patterned the Turkish Republic on Western constitutional systems. He introduced European codes of law and proclaimed Western civilized practices as goals for Turks to strive toward. He tried twice to develop a two-party system, but failed. Neither he nor Turkey were prepared to practice party politics, but he knew democracy required institutions to flourish and set about building them. Unlike communist and fascist leaders of his time, he permitted no disparagement of republican practices or of democracy as an ideal. Atataurk saw himself as an energetic modernizer, not as a messiah chosen by history and destiny to lead. He had no cities renamed for himself and his lieutenants. As dictators expanded their power in the Europe of the 1930s and were imitated in other parts of the world, Ataturk did not waver in his basic convictions. When he died he left a legacy and a structure on which his successors could build. They have continued to build upon his heritage ever since. It has difficult to recall other once-prominent 20th century autocrats of which the same can be said. Ataturk is a model for leaders of other new nations to emulate. Some say they are doing so. They need to study both what he did and what he did not do and chart their own courses accordingly. Ataturk knew it would take at least a generation, perhaps two or three, to forge what remained of a defeated and discredited empire into a nation and implement the modernizing reforms he considered necessary. He rejected glib slogans and ideological short-cuts. He engaged in no deception of himself or the people he led. He faced the world honestly. He did not have to contend with the barrage of advice and criticism most leaders of new states now get, for in his time Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the dozens of other current advocates of instant democratisation did not exist. If they had, it is doubtful Ataturk would have been much moved by them, for they would not have been of much help to him in the tasks he undertook. There are lessons in the history of Ataturk not only for today’s new leaders, but for those who profess to be supporting and helping them as well as those who judge and criticize them.