Mustafa Kemal's Impact On Modern Turkey

Mustafa Kemal’s impact on the modern Turkish state is irrefutable, so much so that he was given the name Atatürk by the national assembly, meaning “father of the Turks”, banning anyone else from using this name. Turkey, one of the few culturally Islamic nations without a Sharia legal system , is often referred to as one of the most modernized states with a Muslim majority . Atatürk is often attributed with the modernization of Turkey, through, amongst other things, social, political and economic reform. Kemalism, the founding ideology of the republic of Turkey, was a series of extensive programs of reform aimed at modernizing Turkey through six pillars, referred to as the six arrows of Kemalism, namely nationalism, republicanism, secularism,
For Atatürk to successfully advocate an independent national identity, he would have to sever links with other Middle Eastern cultures, through language, cultural reform and politics. Ottoman Turkish, which is considered vastly different to modern “Istanbul Turkish”, used many loanwords from Arabic and Persian, and in the empire, Arabic was considered their scientific and legal language, and Persian their literary language. The Turkish spoken by uneducated Turks was referred to as “rough Turkish”, but would eventually become reinstated as the national language of Turkey by Atatürk. In doing so, Atatürk was able to work towards severing connections with the rest of the Muslim world, which he saw as stagnating, and move towards Europe, a symbol of progress . Atatürk spread nationalist ideology throughout Turkey through many mediums, including teaching it to children. As of 1924, the Atatürk regime began publishing new history textbooks, which, unlike its predecessors, focused almost solely on Ottoman heritage, rather than Islam and the Middle East, and portrayed the Islamification of Turkey as its downfall, emphasizing the importance of the 19th century nationalism movement. In 1929, textbooks focusing on the spread of the Turkic people around the globe were released, stating that “Turks brought civilization to the world”, rather than focusing on Arab and Persian civilization, contrasting Ottoman era textbooks. Despite the progress made through nationalism, atrocities were also committed in Turkey due to the spread of this new ideal, such as the Armenian, Greek and Jewish genocide. After the Greco-Turkish wars, Greeks, and in extension, Christians were viewed as a threat to the Turkish republic, and due to this, were either deported or massacred. Aggressive Kemalist nationalism has still left its mark on Turkey today, due to the discrimination non-Turkish Muslims face, who, prior to this new