What ‘Mustafa’ tells us about Kemalism

A documentary on Mustafa Kemal Atatürk by Can Dündar shed light on the mindset of the Kemalists. It has become clear once more that they live in an imaginary world where historical facts and social and political realities of the country do not matter.
What is more worrisome is their ceaseless efforts to turn the country into what they have in their mind: a society homogenized and disciplined by the state apparatus controlled by a bunch of Kemalists. To enable this, they envisage a country isolated from the rest of the world -- and especially from the West.
Kemalism for them is nothing but a dogma with its myths that include a particular narrative about Atatürk. Portraying Atatürk as a normal human being, as Dündar did in his documentary, amounts to blasphemy for the "faithful." Atatürk is not a historical figure for them but a sacrosanct person, a cult figure. So a simple quest for historical facts is attacked by the Kemalists as an assault on Atatürk's personality.
What happened to the documentary "Mustafa" is a case of how ideological dogmatism blinds the Kemalists and closes any free debate about Turkey's recent history. What the Kemalists did to Dündar is an indicator that it is almost impossible to discuss Turkey's recent history. The Kemalists not only try to block Turkey's march toward democratization, Europeanization and a free market economy, but also block it from facing up to its history. They think of themselves as the ultimate veto power.
In so doing, they do not take the realities of the country into account. What a big irony, for the man they adore was a perfect example of pragmatism in politics. From the moment Mustafa Kemal arrived in Anatolia in 1919 to the end of his struggle, he pursued a policy enabling him to mobilize all segments of society and win over their support. He appealed to devout Muslims, to the Kurds, to the pro-Soviet socialists and even to the members of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).
It is a pity that contemporary Kemalists are far more backward than their leader who lived almost a century ago.
The contemporary Kemalists are not tolerant of different ideas and identities. Even moderate Kemalists, like Dündar, have become targets of their assault, no matter what they did previously. A "deviation" from the true path of Kemalism as perceived by the vanguards deserves an incommunicado. Those who deviate from the true path are accused of heresy, not treason, because what they have on their mind as Kemalism is more than an ideology, it is a faith.
The debate over "Mustafa" once more proves that Turkey's new reactionaries are the Kemalists -- the most dogmatic political formation, unwilling to allow free debate on any issue. Their primary concern is to keep the myths of Kemalist dogma untouched, unaware that in this age such a dogma is doomed to become passé.
01 December 2008, Monday