Attaturk and Muslim resurgence
[from Dawn Magazine]
By Sharif al-Mujahid
Since the turn of the 20th century, the Muslim world has seen many an aspirant to political leadership. The leadership sought for was, in the first place, of this or that segment of the Muslim world. However, when the work of a certain leader, albeit essentially in his own area, affected positively the course of events in other Muslim countries as well , he was accorded recognition, not merely as the leader of his own country but also of the entire Muslim world. In the first four decades of the 20th century, only one Muslim leader could fulfil this criterion, and that was Kemal Attaturk (1881-1938) of Turkey.
Immediate and almost universal as Kemal’s recognition was, it was actuated by a host of factors. Yet the main reason was that against the sombre backdrop of an utter dearth of bold and courageous leadership in the Muslim world, Kemal provided such leadership after a pretty long time. He inspired and successfully led the Turkish revolutionary movement (1919-22), and through it brought about the regeneration and re-birth of Turkey, which, of course, was his principal aim. More significant was the impact of his movement upon long-term Allied plans and designs in the Middle East. To quote John Marlowe, it “pricked the bubble of that Western European pseudo-Renaissance which, in the first of victory (in the First World War), saw the collapse of the Ottoman Empire as an opportunity to push the frontiers of Europe eastwards to the old limits of the Roman Empire, to re-integrate the Levant into the sphere of European civilization, to recreate the Mediterranean as a European Mare Nostrum and so, in effect, to reverse effects of the defeat which Islam had inflicted on Christianity 1,300 years before.”
In the process were aborted the well-orchestrated Allied strategic plans for the partition of Asia Minor between Greece, Italy, and France, and for a reconstituted Armenia and Kurdistan, both independent Turkey, and under American and British mandates respectively.
True, there have been similar movements elsewhere against Western physical encroachments and intrusions before and after Kemal - movements such as those led by Imam Sham’il (1798-1871) in Daghestan, Central Asia, by Emir Abdel-Kader (1808-83) in Algeria, by Ahmad ‘Urabi Pasha (1839-1911) in Egypt, by Mohammad Ben Abd el-Kirm [Karim] el-Khattabi (1882-1963) in the Riffs (Morocco). But Kemal’s movement differed from these and other kindred movements on, at least, two important counts. First “the defiance of the victorious Allies by the defeated Turks within less than a year after the Armistice of the October, 30, 1918,” which Toynbee describes as “the classic example” of “the new Islamic Nationalism,” was directed, openly or obliquely against all Allied powers. Second, Kemal’s riposte was supremely successful. To quote Toynbee, "The hardihood and endurance of the Turks, in challenging the decision of the four-years’ war of 1914-18 by waging a three years’ ‘war after the War’ from the summer of 1919 to the autumn of 1922, were rewarded by sensational success. They not only evicted the Greeks from Anatolia and Eastern Trace, but - alone among the nations defeated in 1918 - they refused to accept a dictated peace and successfully insisted on negotiating a settlement with the Principal Allied Powers on a footing of equality." And, according to Bernard Lewis, “Alone among the defeated powers of the First World War, the Turks had succeeded in defying the victors and obtaining a negotiated peace on their own terms. Alone among the crushed people of Asia, the Turks had been able to drive out the invader and restore full national sovereignty.”
In terms of Asian resurgence and recovery of her lost self- confidence, Kemal’s adroit reversal of the Allied plans was as crucial as the Japanese victory over the Russians in 1905. If the latter had shattered the myth of Western invincibility and had helped Asians overcome the chronic and deep-seated sense of inferiority, which had hung over them for the previous two centuries, “Ataturk’s successful defiance of the victorious Allies emboldened Iraqis and Egyptians to rise against British, and Syrians to rise against French, rule,” to quote Marlowe again.
What is more, AtaTurk’s posture had a domino effect as well. Thus, to it may be attributed the repudiation of the unratified Anglo-Persian Treaty, designed to turn Iran into a virtual British protectorate. This was done by the new Iranian Government under the leadership of Reza Khan, afterwards Reza Shah Pahlavi (1878-1944). In aims and methods alike, the Arab nationalist movement was as well profoundly influenced by AtaTurk’s. If the latter was the first conscious, successful movement to exclude altogether Western political influence from the most sensitive part of the Middle East, the Arab nationalist movement is still working for the eventual expulsion of the West from the rest of the region. Indeed, to quote Marlowe, “the long retreat of the West, which started with the Greek defeat by the Turkish revolutionary army at the battle of the Sakarya, on the road to Ankara, is still [1964] going on.”
All this, of course, was not immediately apparent during 1919- 22 but the very fact of Kemal having been the first Muslim leader in a long while to have successfully defied the West prompted the Muslim world to acclaim him as a hero. This was confirmed at Lausanne (1923) which, to quote the Aga Khan (1877-1957), was the first treaty to be signed by a Muslim nation with a great Western Power on “a footing of equality” since the Ottomans’ retreat from and reversal at Vienna, some two-and-a-half centuries ago. More surprising, Kemal’s popularity even survived his dramatic dismantling of the classic Khilafat in March 1924.
No wonder, Jinnah acclaimed AtaTurk as “the foremost figure in the Muslim East,” on his death on Nov 10, 1938, adding, “In Iran and Afghanistan in Egypt and of course in Turkey, he demonstrated to the consternation of the rest of the world that Muslim nations were coming into their own. In Kemal AtaTurk the Islamic world has lost a great hero.” And Jinnah called on Indian Muslims to keep “the example of this great man in front of them as an inspiration.”
