Mustafa Kemal Ataturk or the Father of the Turks; is the founder of modern Turkey and its national hero in the eyes of his followers; the enemy of Islam and the destroyer of the caliphate in the eyes of his opponents.
He managed in a few years to emerge as a military leader and then as a political leader; abolishing the Ottoman caliphate, and establishing its place in modern Turkey; which became as he wanted a secular state of Western character, laws, and passion.
Who is Mustafa Kemal Ataturk ?
Mustafa Ali Reda was born in 1881 in the Greek city of Thessaloniki; which was with the Ottoman Empire at that time, and his father – Ali Reda – was a simple employee. Ali Reza hung his sword over Mustafa’s cradle on the day of his birth; then gave him for military service. The father did not witness the fulfillment of his dream and the joining of his son to the military.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk started in a traditional religious school after that he entered a modern school. Then he went to the High Military School in 1893 as a young boy. The name “Kemal”, which was given to him by a mathematics teacher; because of his superiority, and he became known as “Mustafa Kemal”; then he acquired the name “Ataturk” later after his coming to power, which means “father of the Turks”.
The ambitious young man
He graduated with the rank of captain in the year 1905; then fought several wars within the Ottoman army in Albania and Tripoli. Before the Ottoman Empire participated in the First World War alongside the Axis powers; where the star of the officer Mustafa Kemal emerged as a high-class military leader; with the promotion to the rank of general in 1916, which is only 35 years old.
Years before those events and immediately after his graduation from the military school; Mustafa Kemal had established during his service in Damascus a secret cell that he called the homeland and freedom; against what his followers describe (the tyranny of the Ottoman Sultan). Although he did not know of this organization any political activity; such as the Union and Progress Association The two organizations start from one principle; until it was said that Mustafa Kemal actually joined the last assembly after the matter of his organization was exposed to the authorities.
Regardless of the political reference of the strongly rising officer; the name Mustafa Kemal became famous after what he achieved with his forces; in Palestine, Aleppo, and Antakya during the war. But the importance of General Mustafa Kemal increased after these events when the First World War ended; with the defeat of his country and the occupation of large parts of it from Before the Allied armies. At that time, this officer had to play the role of the liberator who was consecrated by a national hero throughout the Ottoman Empire, which attracted the sympathy of many Muslims.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the War of Independence
Mustafa Kemal led the war of independence to liberate occupied Anatolia. And his charisma was clearly evident when he refused the orders of the sultan to give up duty and return to Istanbul from the British. Until the end of the summer of 1922, he was able to expel the occupying forces from his country.
These victories earned General Mustafa Kemal a fame that filled the horizons of the Islamic world, who viewed him as a hero, especially as he used religious figures and religious scholars to mobilize people to fight with him, and congratulations from Islamic countries poured in on him, and the West alerted him and the media wrote about him there that increased his fame and influence.
During the liberation battles, specifically in the spring of 1920, Mustafa Kemal established the Great National Council in Ankara from representatives of the popular forces participating in the liberation war, to turn into a government parallel to the authority of the Ottoman Caliph in Istanbul, and in 1921 the Council issued what he called the Basic Law, whose issuance coincided with the proclamation of victory and liberation Turkish lands in the summer of 1922, when Mustafa Kemal announced the abolition of the Sultanate.
In July 1923, the government of Mustafa Kemal signed the Treaty of Lausanne, which enshrined his leadership of Turkey with international recognition. On October 29 of the same year, he declared the birth of the Turkish Republic and abolished the succession, declared a president and made Ankara the capital of the new state instead of Istanbul and began a series of measures that continued. A few years ago, he completely changed the face of Turkey.
Establishment of the Republic of Turkey
Mustafa Kemal began his procedures by changing the forms of people, as he prohibited the wearing of the fez and turban and promoted Western clothing, banned religious schools and abolished the Sharia courts, removed the tas and shrines, abolished sectarian and religious titles, adopted the international calendar, wrote laws inspired by the Swiss constitution, and in 1928 abolished the use of the Arabic letter In writing and he commanded the use of the Latin letter in an attempt to sever Turkey’s association with the East and the Islamic world.
Turkey has essentially transformed during the 15 years of Mustafa Kemal’s rule. And the Turks think of him as the founder of a modern strong state. But his opponents stress that he not only removed the last Islamic caliphate countries, and he fought religion through the secular system that he established in Turkey. But rather he linked the progress of The country and its development by abandoning the Islamic identity in history and practice. Therefore Kemalist secularism separated religion from the state; then controlled religious practice and prevented all manifestations of religiosity through legal procedures protected by state institutions, most notably the army.
Death of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
Mustafa Kemal died after his illness in November 1938, and five years after his death, the Turkish Parliament granted him the title Ataturk (Father of the Turks) in his honor and eternity, and to this day the rules that Ataturk set still govern Turkey, but these rules remained the subject of internal debate, whether declared or not. Announced because it touched the religiosity that represents the essence of the soul of society, and these rules have been violated more than once, and today they are facing serious questions about their survival with the spread of the Islamic movement in Turkey.
Sixty years after his death, and in October 1998; the Turkish security authorities arrested 14 Islamists, while they were trying to carry out a suicide operation to blow up Ataturk’s tomb in Ankara during the celebrations of the founding of the republic, and while they were in prison, many were arguing about whether it could be preserved. Ataturk’s legacy is as efficient as preserving his grave