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Ataturk Printable Version PRINTABLE VERSION
by Ardavan Bahrami, United States Oct 30, 2004
Peace & Conflict   Opinions

  

The main portal of Ankara University proclaims, ‘In life, the truest guide is science.’
Once again it is shattering to witness that some of my compatriots believed or may still do, that mullahs who take away the functioning of their mind and believe in running everyday life according to laws written fourteen hundred years ago for the barbarians of the Arabian Desert, can bring our nation’s appalling condition any positive reform or prosperity.
It is demoralizing to see, Iranians gathering around backward and corrupt religious figures looking for guidance or having the slightest hope for these types of creatures to improve their status or that of our country. Believing in factions only created by the Islamic Republic itself to further use the gullibility of my people, Iranians have wasted several good years in the hope that the so called reformists can solve Iran’s countless problems by a milder interpretation of Koranic laws.
In the age of science and reason when religion – very rightly, becomes a private matter or even the thing of the past, Iranians, instead of rising themselves and taking their future in their own hands, are either looking for saviours this time appearing with Zoroaster’s fire walking down an aircraft praying for the re-election of the American president who would love them and feel sorry for them and will come to their rescue from their dire condition.
Turkey, a country that even today may not be taken seriously by many Iranians who rather stick to the stereotype mentality which considered the ‘Turks’ as inferior; has a lot to learn from. One important and vital lesson Iranians can learn from the Turks is their concept of patriotism.
Turkey salvaged from the miseries left by the Ottomans would have not survived to this day had they not adhered to Atatürk’s modern vision of a progressive and prosperous country, particularly in the past two and half decades of political and ideological turmoil created by Islamic fundamentalism born out of the Islamic revolution of Iran.

Atatürk believed in the transformation of thought into an ideal and its high moral personality. During the Balkan wars of 1912, when Izzet Pasha announced that some men of religion were to be sent to the front line to boost the morale of the soldiers, Atatürk responded that morale was being given by the regimental officers. ‘To send a delegation of such people will show that the war-power of our army is near to collapse, and will result in speculation about the poor state of our government. Therefore, this attempt should be stopped.’
In order to teach secularism to the Turks without using the word, Atatürk tired to establish a fundamental link between parliament and religion, “The government of the Turkish National Assembly is national and it is materialistic; it worships reality. It is not a government willing to commit murder or drag the nation into the swamps in search of useless ideologies.” to further emphasize his belief in science he said; “the true enlightenment in life is science. We obtain inspirations not from the skies, but directly from life.”
Mustafa Kemal was from an uneducated family who had not been able to equip him with an academic background. His father died when he was seven, and his mother wanted him to receive religious education and become a Muslim preacher. The young Kemal chose, by his own will and decision, a military education for himself, and pursued his own education apart from the classical education supplied by military schools. He learned French and German by his own efforts, and read the historical and literary works of the very few Turkish authors active at that time while he was in military school.
Turkey of the post First World War and post Ottoman era was a country ravaged by years of wars, which needed a new national identity. What remained from the vast Ottoman Empire was the heart of the Turkish land with new boundaries.
Unlike the Ottoman period, where nationality and therefore nations where subject to their religion, similar to post-revolution Iran and the introduction of the concept of ‘ommat’ – Moslem population, Atatürk stated that, “Turkish nationality is for people who speak Turkish, for those who are brought up with Turkish culture, share Turkish ideals and who live on Turkish soil; these people” he said, “are Turks, regardless of their race or religion.”
Although today’s Turkey may not adhere in its entirety to Atatürk’s ideals in political terms, but it is thanks to the EU’s requirements and pressure that is pushing Turkey again towards such attributes as freedom of conscience and crucial rights of the individual.
On the same subject Mustafa Kemal Atatürk iterated that, “Each person has liberty to think and believe freely, to posses a political view of his own fulfillment, and to act in any way to suit himself as far as the regulations of any religion are concerned.’ However, he emphasized that no individual’s conscience could be guided by another.







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Ardavan Bahrami


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