Turkey at 100 🇹🇷
October 29, 2023 - The Turkish Republic celebrates its centennial
It’s Sunday. And while I’d normally be running around Prospect Park and brunching on avocado toast, I wanted to share some thoughts on the Turkish Republic’s centennial. They are, much like the country, imperfect. (That means no one read through for typos or coherence. Apologies.)
Happy birthday Turkey. 🇹🇷🎂
Turkey celebrates its centennial today. It does so amid the backdrop of a struggling economy and political polarization at home and conflicts to its north in Ukraine and to its south in Syria and Gaza.
Yet it is not the country at the center, but a man — Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Rising to power in 2003, Erdoğan has been Turkey’s leader for the past 20 years. That has earned him a place among the strongmen of the world, along with Putin, Orbán, and Xi.
On this 100th anniversary of the republic he is also being compared to Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
When he first came to power, Erdoğan, a devout Muslim from Istanbul’s backstreets, positioned himself as the representing the “Black” Turks — the pious masses that the secular Kemalist elite looked down upon and ignored. He has ever since worked to avenge them; bring them respect and a voice in Turkey, while attempting to become the “new Atatürk.”
Turkey is often broken down into clichés: It is a country born out of the ashes of the failing Ottoman Empire. As a majority Muslim nation at the door of both Europe and the Middle East, it is a bridge, a crossroads between east and west.
Maddingly, these clichés are where many formulate and end their understanding. In doing so, they fail to see the complicated, multidimensional place filled with people from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and beliefs. My family are Tatars. There are Circassians, Jews, Laz, Armenians, Greeks, Arabs, and Kurds. All have come together, willingly or not, under the idea of “the Turk.”
For Atatürk, the Turk would be part of a secular and democratic nation devoted to progress. At the start of the 20th century that did not come easy. Like much of the world, Turkey was underdeveloped and poor. As such, his foreign policy focused on stability, which was summed up in this famous motto, Peace at home. Peace in the World.
It also focused on the West. At the time, that is where progress — and, more importantly, prosperity, happened. Atatürk took measures to enable the Turks to become more Western. They included a ban on the headscarf and fez and pushed religion out of public life.
Here is the point where the discussion risks becoming about religion, when it should be endurance.
Atatürk witnessed how religion ruined the Ottoman Empire. He sidelined Islam less out of faithlessness and more in an effort to save a nation. One can argue that he and the men that followed him took that took too far.
Today, Erdoğan has reversed many of Atatürk’s bans. Turkish women can wear a headscarf in public universities and hold jobs in government. For him, Islam is what brings the Turkish people to life and, thereby, drives a nation. That’s debatable.
What is not is the reality that Turkey is a country of more than 80 million people from different backgrounds, beliefs, and perspectives. For the past century, it has struggled to unite these people in an effort to prosper and grow. Like every nation in the world, that has been an imperfect process. For Turkey, which borders Iran, Iraq, and Syria to the south and Russia to the north, that has been more challenging.
The West has used Turkey as a pawn in its geostrategic machinations. NATO welcomed the country into its defense pact in 1952, but the EU has kept Turkey out of its economic alliance. Still, Turkey has managed to thrive.
Turks are incredibly entrepreneurial and creative. There are not only a number of billion dollar companies in the country, but Istanbul has become a startup hub. That has contributed to the country’s growth and resilience, despite its history of coups and crises.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan takes credit for this achievement, some deserved, while pointing at others for the country’s current economic woes. He has put himself at the center of everything that happens in Turkey. He should remember that they happen because of another man, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who created the nation he now leads and, more importantly, the people who call themselves Turks. Ne mutlu Türküm diyene. — Elmira
Editorial Team
Elmira Bayrasli - Editor-in-Chief
Editors:
Pin-Shan Lai
Catherine Lovizio
Maya Scott
Emily Smith