What Atatürk stood for

The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.

It is with deep consternation that I read the opinion piece from Greg Arzoomanian ’79 about Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his legacy that appeared in The Daily Princetonian last month.

Arzoomanian’s claim that Atatürk was an “anti-Armenian figure that inspired Nazi ideology” is absurd, and his citing of out-of-context quotes by historian Taner Akçam is misleading and pernicious. His arguments as to why Princeton should retire the Atatürk professorship are built on false premises. Since Arzoomanian does not seem to understand (or has chosen to wilfully mischaracterise) Atatürk and his nation-building efforts, I, as a Turkish alumna of Princeton, would like to help explain what Atatürk stood for.

Arzoomanian claims that the goal of Atatürk was to establish “an ethnically homogeneous state,” but this is simply not true. Atatürk is the founder of modern and secular Turkey, and his idea of who is a Turk is best encapsulated in his saying “Ne mutlu Türküm diyene”, which means, “Happy is the one who says, ‘I am a Turk.’” This is the antithesis of the homogenous definition of Turkishness that Arzoomanian portrays; it means that anyone who embraces the Republic and its values can proudly call themselves a Turk.

The secular republic that Atatürk founded gave people of all religious and ethnic backgrounds the security to live peacefully as citizens, instead of subjects of an empire. Despite the population exchanges mandated by the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, more than 500,000 Greek, Armenian, Jewish, and other minorities continued to live in Turkey as Turkish citizens.

The quote cited by Akçam is presented as evidence that Atatürk was anti-Armenian. Yet, in Atatürk’s speech (which was made shortly after the conclusion of the Turkish Independence War and before the founding of the Turkish Republic), the point is different: Atatürk laments that the Ottomans did not believe that Turks could also be artists and artisans. As a result, Turks were excluded from these professions, which became dominated by minorities, and Atatürk argued that this was unfair since Turks had every right to participate in craft guilds.

If these important contextual details were omitted, this raises serious questions about Akçam’s scholarship. Conveniently for their narrative, Arzoomanian and Akçam seem to not have cited Atatürk’s description of the Turks and the Armenians as “two hardworking people who have lived in friendship for centuries.”

To try to “cancel” Atatürk for out-of-context remarks taken from one speech amongst hundreds is patently absurd. The hurt that retiring the Atatürk Professorship would inflict on Princeton’s Turkish professors, students, and alumni would be immeasurable, as Atatürk’s principles have been instrumental in shaping us. It would also be interpreted as a repudiation of the secular modern republic that he founded, as the Turkish Alumni Association of Princeton noted online after Arzoomanian’s piece was published. Arzoomanian’s attempt to do so is doubly pernicious for trying to perpetuate a cancel culture that has no place on college campuses.

The efforts to paint Atatürk as an inspiration to Hitler are also misguided. Many leaders, including Hitler’s “most defiant and unrelenting foe” Winston Churchill, admired Atatürk because he was a military genius as evidenced by the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli and the Turkish Independence War, as well as a revolutionary statesman who established a modern republic from the ashes of an empire.

In fact, Atatürk worked to counter Hitler’s objectives, as illustrated by the following historical anecdote: When the Nazis came to power in 1933, many German and Austrian academics (especially Jewish scholars or political opponents) lost their positions. Atatürk saw an opportunity to modernize the Turkish universities and welcomed these scholars to Turkey. When Hitler threatened Atatürk and demanded that he stop rescuing the Jewish professors, Atatürk responded "A corporal cannot manipulate me for his murders," and ordered that the procedures for the professors wishing to take refuge in Turkey be speeded up. All in, Turkey took in 189 such scholars.

Atatürk’s status as a visionary leader is also cemented by his stance on women’s rights — Turkish women got the right to vote in 1930 for local elections and the right to vote and be elected to office in 1934 for national elections, a full ten years before French women. As a Turkish woman, I am incredibly grateful to Atatürk for growing up in an independent and secular Turkey, for having the education that brought me to Princeton, and for his founding of the country that welcomed my grandparents from Bulgaria in the 1950s when they had to leave because of the tightening Communist regime.

As Turks, we take strength and inspiration from Atatürk’s legacy and his incredible achievements. As such, it is an absolute affront to read Arzoomanian’s suggestion that the Atatürk Professorship at Princeton University be retired, especially as Atatürk brought about the country where all of us, no matter our ethnic or religious background, can live as one people.