ATATURK: TURKEY WRESTLES WITH HOW TO REMEMBER ITS FOUNDER
Yigal Schleifer Correspondent
The Christian Science Monitor
May 12, 2010 Wednesday
A wave of biopics about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk stirs hot debate over
modern Turkey’s identity.
It’s easy to mistake Muratoglu Kirtasiye, a tidy Istanbul stationery
store, for perhaps a small museum dedicated to the memory of Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s secularizing founder. Located in a
bustling district filled with print shops near the heart of Istanbul’s
Old City, Muratoglu specializes in providing schools with Ataturk
paraphernalia and is stocked floor to ceiling with items bearing
his image. There are gold-colored busts, clocks with his picture
on them, and framed photographs and paintings that seem suited for
every conceivable setting: Ataturk riding victoriously in uniform on
horseback, gazing pensively skyward, surrounded by children with a kind
smile on his face, looking gentlemanly while sitting in a wicker chair
and dressed in a smoking jacket. "He’s the world’s biggest man. There’s
no one else like him," says Fadil Karali, the store’s manager, scanning
the numerous pictures of Ataturk, who died in 1938, lining the walls.
"He was the kind of person that, unfortunately, only comes once every
100 years," Mr. Karali adds. "He died a long time ago, but we haven’t
forgotten him." But the question that seems to be increasingly facing
Turks is which Ataturk to remember? Like the multitude of images in
Karali’s store, there now appear to be competing, if not conflicting,
takes on just who Ataturk was. One place where the battle over how to
define Ataturk and his legacy can be clearly seen these days is on the
big screen in Turkey. In the past two years, three new films about the
legendary leader have been released: a controversial documentary that,
despite its efforts to humanize Ataturk, was criticized for insulting
his memory, and two biopics that were in turn criticized for glossing
over certain difficult details and for overly romanticizing the life
of a complicated figure. Turkey is currently going through a period of
deep political polarization, much of it over two unresolved issues left
over since the time of Ataturk: What role should religion play in the
public square, and what role should the powerful state play in private
life? In many ways, it appears that the battle over how to portray
Ataturk is very much at the heart of Turkey’s ongoing struggle over how
to define itself. "What is in contention in Turkey is not Ataturk’s
legacy. The fight is not about the past; it is about our future,"
says Faruk Logoglu, formerly Turkey’s ambassador to Washington and
undersecretary of the country’s ministry of foreign affairs. Ataturk,
a military officer-turned-statesman who led the fight to rebuild
modern Turkey out of the ashes of the failed Ottoman Empire, is a
ubiquitous presence in the country. His image hangs in every public
office and almost every private one. Parliamentarians take an oath to
follow his principles, while schoolchildren start learning about his
life and exploits in kindergarten. "Insulting Ataturk," meanwhile,
is a punishable offense. Access to YouTube, for example, has been
blocked in Turkey by court order for the last few years because of
the presence of video clips posted by Greek users that were seen as
mocking Ataturk. But despite being ever present, the real Ataturk
remains something of a mystery, says Tibet Kaan Demirtas, producer of
"Veda," a biographical film about the leader that was released this
year. "I don’t think that people know a lot about him. People know
what’s been told to them, but if you look very deep into Ataturk,
he’s the most talked-about person in Turkey, but still the least
understood. There’s a lot more to know about him," says Mr. Demirtas,
whose film was accused by some critics as further "mythologizing"
Ataturk. "Ataturk is a legend. He’s not just a character. That’s why
it’s so hard and risky to do a film about him." That was certainly
the lesson learned by Can Dundar, a famous Turkish journalist
whose 2008 documentary, "Mustafa," tried to bring Ataturk down to
earth. Mr. Dundar’s version of the nation’s hero, that of a smoker and
heavy drinker who ultimately died a lonely man, was at odds with the
official narrative and provoked a serious backlash. Columnists told
readers to boycott the film and a legal case was opened against Dundar
for insulting Ataturk (it was ultimately stopped). "Now I know what
it means to confront taboos," Dundar told the Turkish daily Hurriyet
after his film was released. "There is a mythical vision of him as an
individual, and there is a problem in creating a more human vision of
him as an individual, with human deficiencies," says Rifat Bali, an
independent historian based in Istanbul who, like other researchers,
has found it easier to access archival material about Ataturk outside
Turkey than inside the country. "The Kemalists" – as Ataturk’s
ideological heirs are known – "made Ataturk into a taboo subject,
one that you cannot discuss in a scholarly way." For many Turks,
the effort to "humanize" Ataturk is nothing more than an attempt to
chip away at Turkey’s foundations. Many look at Ataturk as the bond
that holds the country together; questioning Ataturk’s stature or
legitimacy is tantamount to questioning the nation’s legitimacy. "What
happens when you alter the image of Ataturk? Ataturk is like the main
glue that keeps Turkey together as a country beyond race and ethnic
differences," says Bedri Baykam, an artist and writer who is one of
the Kemalist movement’s leading voices. "If you take out this glue or
dilute it, then you will find Turkey in a thousand pieces," he says,
speaking on the phone from Paris, where he is in the process of setting
up an exhibition. "Normally, a historical character like Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk should have worldwide, universal recognition," adds Mr. Baykam,
who says he has contemplated making his own film about Ataturk. "He
left a great legacy for the world, a model of the whole world." Still,
while the subject of Ataturk remains perhaps Turkey’s last great taboo,
observers say that talking about his legacy has become easier, part of
a wider democratization trend in Turkey that has seen the space widen
for discussion on other previously no-go subjects, such as the Kurdish
and Armenian issues. "In the past five or six years, articles, books,
and TV programs that are directly critical of Ataturk have come to
the surface. You can see them now. Some of the episodes that happened
during Ataturk’s rule that couldn’t be talked about before are now
being talked about," says Mustafa Akyol, a liberal Islamic columnist
with the English-language Hurriyet Daily News. "We can speak about
him right now in a way that we couldn’t before. And people who think
he made important mistakes or misconstrued the country can say this
now." But as the reception given to the recent Ataturk films shows,
the debate about how and who gets to define his legacy is one that
is most likely to continue. Back at the Ataturk memorabilia-filled
stationery store, manager Karali says he believes the icon is as
relevant as ever. "He created our republic and won our independence. We
now live a good life and owe it to him," he says. "He did good for us."