Daily Times: COMMENT : Ataturk and Taksim Square — Yasser Latif Hamdani
Now the religiously inspired government of Reccep Tayyip Erdogan seeks to undo Ataturk’s legacy completely by banning alcohol and changing the landscape of Istanbul altogether
The recent Taksim Square protests in Turkey have reignited the debate on how far should a government in a Muslim country, i.e. a country with a Muslim majority, be allowed to regulate the personal and public conduct of its citizens. It has also brought back into the public consciousness the memory of Kemal Ataturk, one of the greatest modernising leaders produced by the Muslim world. So strong is the memory of Ataturk and the association of the protesters with him that even the government had to respond by hanging his large portrait on a building in Taksim Square.
Who was Kemal Ataturk and why is he so important? He was a legend in his own lifetime, admired widely for having successfully led the Turkish nation, i.e. Muslims of the Anatolia region, in a war of independence against Great Britain, France and Greece, forcing them to renegotiate the Treaty of Versailles and replace it with the Treaty of Lausanne. He also abolished the age old Ottoman Caliphate and monarchy to establish the first republic in the Muslim world. Then a few years later, he abolished the state religion and made Turkey a modern secular republic, albeit flawed at times (a 1932 law banned 30 odd professions to citizens of Turkey belonging to the Greek Orthodox faith). Still, in the balance, Ataturk managed to lay the foundations of a state that would emerge from being the ‘sick man of Europe’ to a major economy and world power. That was the genius of Ataturk.
Categories: Europe, Secularism, Separation of Church and State