Ataturk and the Creation of a Secular State
Defeat in the First World War left Turkey without an empire, and religious issues were of great importance in the subsequent Turkish War of Independence (1919-22) during which Mustafa Kemal (1881-1938)—later to receive the name Ataturk—organised resistance to Turkey’s occupation by the victors of the World War.
The Sultan and his government in Istanbul were subservient to Allied demands and regarded opposition as hopeless. The Sultan ordered wide distribution to be given to afetva issued by his seyhillislam calling upon the faithful to kill Mustafa Kemal and his ‘rebels’. Mustafa Kemal countered a month later, on 5 May 1920, by getting the mufti of Ankara to issue afetva, endorsed by 152 other muftis in Anatolia, declaring the seyhiilislam’sfetva invalid because it had been issued under foreign duress, and calling upon Muslims to ‘liberate their Caliph from captivity’. But this was not enough to prevent serious attacks upon Kemal’s Nationalists by men who unquestioningly accepted as always the authority of the Sultan, his Grand Vizier and his Seyhiilislam. Mustafa Kemal needed to retain the support of all who were prepared to give it; he could not afford to alienate anyone by disregarding their religious susceptibilities. His effective campaign against the Greek invaders eventually swung many Muslims to his side: the Christian Greeks could be seen as enemies of Islam as well as of Turkey.Mustafa Kemal used the prestige and power gained from his victory in the War of Independence to bring about a most remarkable and thoroughgoing transformation of his people. He combined within his person the qualities of bold visionary and clear-sighted practical politician. He therefore kept his ultimate goals to himself, never losing sight of his objective but never making a move towards it until he calculated he could muster enough support to cajole his Grand National Assembly into approving the next step along the way.
By this means he effected the dismantling of the long-established religious apparatus and turned the erstwhile theocracy into a secular state.He started at the top with the Sultan-Caliph. With difficulty he managed to persuade the Turkish Grand National Assembly that the sultanate and the caliphate should be separated and the former office abolished. On 1 November 1922 the last sultan-caliph was therefore dismissed, andon 18 November his cousin, Abdiilmecid, was appointed caliph. It had required all Mustafa Kemal’s formidable powers of persuasion to achieve that much; it would not have been possible to abolish the caliphate at the same time because that office was still held in such high esteem by multitudes of the faithful. In fact, as far back as the sixteenth century Ottoman sultans had used the title caliph, but it was not until the nineteenth century that they laid much stress upon this role. Abdiilhamid (1876-1909) used it in a calculated bid to maintain the support of his Arab Muslim subjects, and at the outbreak of the First World War Sultan Mehmed V used the title caliph in an unsuccessful bid to turn Muslim subjects of the British and French Empires against their rulers. But within Turkey itself a considerable number of devout Muslims accepted the early Sunni tradition that the caliph must receive unhesitating obedience and to rebel against him was to rebel against God. Nevertheless, Mustafa Kemal saw the caliphate as an obstacle to progress and he was determined to remove it. In 1924 he seized an opportunity to persuade Parliament to abolish the office on the grounds that foreign intriguers were trying to use it to interfere in Turkey’s affairs. He took the same opportunity to deliver further heavy blows at the religious establishment: the abolition of the post of $eyhiilislam and the Ministry of §eriat and Evkaf and the transference of all religious schools and medreses to the Ministry of Education. These drastic measures caused deep unrest, and in February 1925 the Nakjibendi §ey Said of Palu led a serious rebellion of Kurds in the south-east of Anatolia aimed at ending the republic and restoring the caliphate and the $eriat.
This uprising was crushed and its forty-seven leaders were executed at the end of June 1925.The revolt had shown that the tarikats remained a powerful force in Turkey, and Kemal determined to destroy them. He considered their arcane mysteries had no place in the modern world he wanted Turkey to join, and he knew that throughout history various tarikats had sheltered dissident elements and engaged in subversive activities—indeed some of them had lent him vital support during the War of Independence and in his struggle against the sultan. He grasped the nettle in November 1925 and banned all tarikats and their activities and closed their meeting-places. He declared that Turkey no longer had need of them. In their place he offered his vision of an enlightened society based on scientific learning. ‘The straightest and truest tarikat is the tarikat of civilisation’, he declared.
Kemal was determined that Turkey should achieve the level of civilisation enjoyed by advanced nations in the West. He therefore set about bringing his country into line with Western Europe. This process affected almost every aspect of his people’s lives. He banned the wearing of the fez and discouraged the veil, he adopted the Western calendar and the international 24-hour clock (instead of the Muslim system based on the time of sunrise), and made Sunday the weekly day of rest. He ousted the Arabbased script and introduced a Latin-based alphabet. He made surnames compulsory, taking for himself the name ‘Ataturk’ (Father of the Turks). He encouraged sculptors and artists to produce works in the Western style, so statues and paintings of living things at last became familiar to Turks.
He strove to exclude the influences of Islam from national life. In a move of fundamental importance he introduced new laws based on European models to replace what was left of the $eriat. He gave women the vote and encouraged them to stand for election. He banned religious education in schools and closed the Faculty of Theology. He set up a new Department of Religious Affairs under direct contol of the prime minister. Its task was, in effect, to ensure that religion was used in the service of the state—a complete reversal of the old Ottoman concept that the purpose of government was to implement the will of Allah. The nation itself was now to become the focus of devotion. Nationalist fervour was instilled into the people almost as a substitute for religion, although all citizens remained free to practise their faith in their private lives. In keeping with the emphasis on Turkishness, the Arabic call to prayer was banned and a Turkish formula substituted. In 1937 the constitution was amended to define Turkey as a secular state.