From: hermi@function.mps.ohio-state.edu (Lotfi Hermi)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Attaturk- Treator or Dude ??
Date: 23 Nov 1992 22:05:47 -0500
Organization: Department of Mathematics, The Ohio State University
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: function.mps.ohio-state.edu

What did Turkey and the Muslim World benefit from Ata-turc's rule?  This
question is not old as recent events in Bosnia, Albania and the surrounding
Baltic states unfold?  Are Turcs ,and along the same lines Muslims, better off
than before the caliphate was brought down and the Modern Turkish state was
founded?


The agonizing situation of millions of Muslims in Eastern Europe, be it the
killing of thousands of Muslims in Bosnia,the expulsion of about one million
Muslim from Bulgaria two or three years ago and the Quotas set on the Muslim 
population in Greece, Romania, and other East European countries are nothing
but  a  reminder   of  the unstable status quo which the Powers of the time, 
France and Great Britain, tried to create out of the ramp Turkish Muslim em-
pire.  Why is there still fear to include Modern Turkey into the E.C. market?
Europe's fear of Islam   is   still persistent despite the secularisation of 
Turkey.  The   Islamic   factor and the centuries old fear of Turkish Islamic 
character is still part of the policies of alienations the Western Europeans
practice with Turkey.  So what did Attaturc bring to the Turkish people and 
the Turani nation?

Putting the question in prospective one would ask: What were the Turcs before
Islam, and what brought them to the modern place called Turkey from the cent-
ral asian steeps?  
Turcs, before the advent of Islam were, the same Arabs 
were in the time of Jahiliya: Mostly nomadic tribes leaving on heard and 
roaming in the land looking for herbs for their cattle, with no central govern-
ment controlling that movement.  Then, they came into Islam, and were proven 
exellent servicemen for the Abbassi Caliphate and soon with the gradual weak-
ness of the Abbassides, the men of the east who were once Mamluks, or slaves
took over and established Deen as they were commanded to do.  Then, with the
rise of the Eastern Muslim Turkish caliphate, the western part of the Muslim 
world was falling the hands of the Crusaders in Spain and the north african
subcontinent, the Turks took in their hands the affairs of the Ummah and esta-
blished their strong fleet and protected Algeria and Tunisia from falling in 
the hands of the Spanish power.  Turcs also worked on the expansion of the rule
of Islam over land in Eastern Europe.  Most of East European land came under 
their juridiction, but unfortunately, although they were strong militarily,
the caliphate never thought any one could challenge its authority and as a 
result did not try to follow the Western industialist revolution and copy 
that experience in Science and Industry.  Their technolgy became archaic, 
useless and the old man of Europe had to die.  

The old man cannot die 
abruptly as that could send a shock wave in the Muslim world and give birth
to a younger stronger entity that could constitute a new nucleus for the Ummah.
It had to die silently.  First you emputate the hands by cutting the central
caliphate from the Arab World , Muslim India and the different Khanates in 
the defunct Soviet Empire.  The next step, is to stubb the caliphate in the
heart, as no one could resist and defend any more.  Ideas to transfer the 
caliphate from Istanbul to Baghdad or Cairo were circulating around, but what
can the caliph do when these centers of Muslim culture throughout the ages
have already fallen in the hands of the British?

This brief account brings us to the creation of the the Jeunes Turk movement 
much like the new "Jun turks" of Russia; to give a false sense of revival to 
the dying caliphate.  To give just an example, I can mention here the war with
Greece, Turkey's arch-rival, which Attaturk, the young general won, and which
Amir al-shuara, Ahmad Shaouqi, commemorated in one of his poems, describing
Attaturk as the Khalid of the Turcs, and asking him to revive the Khalid (ibn
al-walid) of the Arabs.  Hallas, Attaturk was not the Khalid of the Turcs nor
that of the Arabs, he brought Turkey from that status of honnor between the
nation, to the status we know today.  Can one tell me how much is Turkey's
word is valued in today's world?

As for the use of latin vs arabic script,  it is not a question that a script
is better than another or that Osmanli is not suitable for 20 century usage but
simply the transformation cut (literally and physically) from its Muslim 
patrimoine, which is the only thing a Turc can be proud of.  The policy has
been used by colonial Russia in the different Muslim regions in the USSR and it
proved effective to a great extent.  The question of uniting the different 
Turkic dialects is very old, and different Movement within Crimea and the 
Caucasus were active in trying to come up with a common aggreable  system or
pattern through 
which the different Turkic branches could converge together. It would not have 
ended as we are today, if Attaturk did not force his system on the people and 
cohersed them to destroy their culture.  I end up by saying that evolution has
2 characters: Preservation of what is good and adoption of new creative means.
If one is neglected then, the new entity either dies or comes out disfigured, 
and I wonder what is Turkey in this context ??

Lotfi

Xref: sparky soc.culture.turkish:11794 talk.politics.mideast:22314 talk.politics.soviet:9029 soc.culture.greek:10729 soc.culture.europe:9673 soc.history:9592