Notes on Atatürk, the Rebirth of a Nation by Baron Patrick Kinross

As I read through Atatürk, the Rebirth of a Nation, I could not help but wonder why Kemal Ataturk has a very different reputation from that of his contemporary authoritarians like Stalin or Mussolini. It was closer to the final pages of the book that I realised that the causes of this different reputation is Ataturk's prophetic understanding of the world. His fellow authoritarians used heavy-handed methods and used hate to come to power. Ataturk came to power using the Turks' patriotism and was much more covert in his operations. The episode that struck me the most was Kemal's handling of the outgoing regime -- he let the Sultan escape and arranged for the Sultan's wives' safety. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, lost all pretense of legitimacy when they executed the Romanov family together with their retainers. Below are my notes on the tome by Baron Kinross.

Atatürk's Prophecies

Quotes Thoughts
  • This, as Kemal saw it ahead of his time, was total war. It was not ‘two armies fighting against one another but two nations who are both risking their existence and who summon for the fight all their resources, all their possessions and all their material and moral forces. For this reason, I had to interest the Turkish nation in the war in all their actions, their sentiments and their conceptions, in the same way as the army at the front’. Every single individual in the village, in his home, in the fields, had to consider himself in the same way as those fighting at the front.’ He added prophetically, ‘In future wars also the decisive element of victory will be found in this conception.’
  • The Sultan meanwhile stayed where he was, now deserted by most of his entourage. Kemal, reluctant to risk the popular resentment which would follow his deposition by force, preferred to await events.
  • Here, as he failed to realize, was something new: a patriotic Nationalist movement, unprecedented in an Oriental country, in which principles were paramount. Curzon allowed too little for the national pride of the new Turk. -- Ataturk used this pride
  • Far-sighted in planning but pragmatic in execution, Kemal had decided as far back as 1920 that ‘the great capacity for evolution that he sensed in the conscience and future of the nation should be kept as a national secret in his conscience and when the time came should be applied to the whole of society’.
  • But for the younger generation it was the reform above all which appealed to their imagination and aroused their patriotic enthusiasm. It liberated them effectively from the Ottoman past, and made them feel that they had a stake in the new Turkey of the Republic.
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Democracy

Quotes Thoughts
Ataturk was in no way a believer in democratic processes; he was the “Enlightened Tsar” of the 20th century insofar as he used controlled democratic processes as cover for his goals. He was, however much less despotic than the Sultanate of the Ottoman Empire — he did not believe that his power came from God. He knew that the people brought him to power, therefore he had to improve their quality of life to stay in power. This is a key problem even in the modern Russian Federation — each successive President believes that his power came from God, just as the Sultanate of the 1800s did, and disregards the opinions and desires of the population.

Spirituality

Quotes Thoughts
  • As, night after night, Kemal poured forth these ideas, reducing his listeners to exhaustion, some of them ventured to argue, on practical grounds, that in a country so little used to the ways of democracy the Cabinet should be appointed not by the Assembly but by the president. But Kemal had his motives in propounding the other system. Firstly he saw the vital necessity for an idea, as fuel to keep the Revolution aflame. Only this could unite the disparate elements and give positive substance to the patriotic impulse – an ultimate war aim, conceived in those more abstract terms to which the Oriental mind responds. What better than the slogan of ‘The Sovereignty of the People’? The autocracy of the Sultan and the oligarchy of the Young Turks was to give place in the new Assembly to a form of popular democracy in which the people enjoyed full power, even to the extent of appointing the Cabinet.
  • Kemal’s second consideration was tactical. He must at all costs control this Assembly. But he knew very well that its members would not be easy to handle. Professionally and socially they were a mixed crowd, many of them with a deep distrust of Kemal and his dictatorial ambitions. The need to disarm this prompted his rejection of the orthodox view that the president should appoint his own ministers. The only way to control such an Assembly was to encourage it to think it was controlling itself.
  • Though he had gone through the motions of consulting the generals, Kemal’s mind was already made up. With that extra dimension, which his lesser commanders lacked, of decisiveness, flair, political judgement and psychological knowledge of his enemy, he was as confident of victory as it was prudent to be.
  • There was a rest from political activity. The press was controlled. But there was reasonable freedom of speech among the people in general. Kemal was no ideologist; he was pragmatic in his ideas and did not attempt to impose on them a rigid conformity.
 Atatürk was not a religious man.

Behaviour among Officers

Quotes Thoughts
  • All, in an English idiom, ranked as ‘gentleman’, armed with the assurance of an inherited prestige, an easy integrity and a natural habit of leadership. Kemal, for all those refinements which smoothed his rough edges, came of an insignificant middle-class family and knew it. Far from pretending otherwise, he exploited his more plebeian origins to shock and defy, to assert his personality and flaunt his power, to override the conventions of his social superiors, They, for their part, regarded him more with respect than with love.

Character and Lifestyle

Quotes Thoughts
  • When the battle was over, at Liman von Sanders' request, he gave it to him as a souvenir, receiving in return a handsome chronometer engraved wtih the von Sanders family arms.
  • The crowd then saw him emerge on to the terrace of the hotel, a slim grey-eyed assured figure, in impeccable uniform with a cigarette between his lips. Quietly and without fuss he gave certain orders.
  • Lunch at headquarters was a hurried affair. But in the evenings all relaxed for dinner around an enormous horseshoe table. Here was the atmosphere that suited Kemal. He liked, as he had done in his army mess, to preserve certain standards of ceremony, as though all were partaking not of sparse and simple rations but of a civilized Western repast.
  • ‘War is a game of chance, General. The very best is sometimes worsted. You have done your best as a soldier and as an honourable man; the responsibility rests with chance. Do not be distressed.’ But Tricoupis made a theatrical gesture. ‘Oh, General,’ he exclaimed, ‘I have not done the last thing I ought to have done.’ He had not had the courage to commit suicide. At this emotional outburst Kemal narrowed his eyes and gave him a cynical look. ‘That,’ he said tersely, ‘is a thing which concerns you personally.’
  • His other method of seeking to calm them was through alcohol. Kemal had been drinking freely all his life. In his early youth, less sure of himself than he liked to appear, he had drunk to gain confidence, to impose himself the better on others. As his brain developed, he drank to relax it. At night his thoughts denied him peace; in the daytime they drove him like a dynamo. In the evening – but seldom before sundown – he would drink to release nervous tension.
  • A good wife at this moment was just what he needed, to soften his hard edges, curb his excesses, present to the nation an image of respectable marital stability.

Women and Relationships

Quotes Thoughts
  • To the women, who outnumbered the men, he declaimed, ‘Win for us the battle of education and you will do yet more for your country than we have been able to do. It is to you that I appeal.’
  • Fikriye had become wearisome to him. He was impatient of illness in others. She clung to him in an irritating fashion. She was the Oriental mistress, who had distracted him and suited his needs for a while. But no woman could hold his affections for long, and Fikriye now represented a period of his life that was over. For the life that lay ahead she had nothing to offer him.
  • “Though Kemal and Ismet had similar views and aims, they were so opposite in temperament as to complement one another. … Kemal was adventurous in spirit, independent in character, decisive in action; Ismet was cautious, dependent on the views of another, lacking in initiative,and hesitant in making decisions. Kemal had an intuitive understanding of human behaviour and character; Ismet was an unsure judge of people, whom he treated with reserve and a certain suspicion. Where Kemal was restless, quick-tempered, temperamental, hard-drinking and promiscuous with women, Ismet was calm, stolid, patient, sober and a model family man. He was the antithesis of Kemal, hence just the assistant he needed. Ismet was in fact the born chief of staff, painstaking and loyal, to whom he would dictate his plans, confident that he would interpret them correctly and carry them out with efficiency. He became Kemal’s indispensable ‘shadow’.”
  • Kemal’s Mother: “My Son, I waited for you. You did not come back. You told me that you were going to a tea-party. But I know that you have gone to the front. Know that I pray for you, and do not come back before the war is won.”
  • Kiazim, with his paternal and charitable instincts, had personally adopted more than a thousand orphan boys, between the ages of four and fourteen, whom he dressed in a para-military uniform and to whom his officers gave a form of military training. He established schools to give them an elementary education and to teach them useful trades. Since his own hobby was music, and he liked in his leisure hours to play the violin, he gave them also musical instruction, together with training in arts and crafts. The children knew him as ‘Pasha Baba’ - Father Pasha - and so trusted and revered him that he was able to control them with a minimum of punishment and to encourage them to develop as free individuals.

Summary