Andrew Mango’s biography of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, is a bit of a doorstopper, but nevertheless good reading that provides a familiarity with the late, failing Ottoman Empire and the transition toward the modern Middle East. As informative as the book is, sometimes it suffers from an overabundance of information, which can make reading and following it a bit of a slog. Additionally, while Mango can boast access to the Turkish archives, this comes at the costs one would expect from a state like modern Turkey: access to these archives is dependent on remaining on good terms with Turkey’s, frankly, authoritarian government. While Mango released this book prior to Erdogan and his party taking power in 2002, the cult of personality surrounding Kemal/Ataturk has been around for much longer.
Part of the reason this biography has been sitting on my to-read shelf for a while has been my intent to read more about Ottoman history first, as the last time I read about it in depth was around a decade ago. Fortunately, history books and biographies in general tend to be decent about providing context and this book is no exception in terms of painting the picture of the crumbling Ottoman Empire at the turn of the twentieth century. The empire was crumbling thanks to a variety of factors ranging from the rising tide of nationalism to reliance on outdated, archaic structures as opposed to embracing modern technologies. Ataturk’s proponents see him as dragging Turkey, more or less kicking and screaming, into the modern age as well as preventing it from becoming a theocratic society, as we see so often in the Middle East today from Saudi Arabia to Iran. As a result of this, and as above mentioned, Ataturk is seen as the founder/father of modern Turkey (Ataturk literally means "Father of the Turks"), compared in the book to both George Washington and Cincinnatus, the famous Roman general who returned power and went back to farming after serving as dictator.
This comparison, in my opinion, is an inapt one. The significance of both Cincinnatus and Washington is that they relinquished power; in Washington’s case, he was called back to serve as President, admittedly, but he once more surrendered power and set the two-term precedent that stood for American presidents until FDR—after which, of course, it was enshrined in written law as opposed to respected tradition. Kemal/Ataturk remained in power. This undermines the entire point of what makes the above examples extraordinary—a dictator or ‘Great Man’ rising to power and retaining it until death is just the standard-issue biography of Julius Caesar, those who came before him like Alexander, and those who for centuries have sought to emulate him.
Where the comparison does work, however, is in both Washington and Ataturk being military men who turned to politics. And in regards to being a military man, he wasn’t bad at what he did: he was a commander during the Battle of Gallipoli—not only did this WWI battle become pivotal as the basis for the Turkish War of Independence, the mismanagement by the Allies thanks to Churchill’s involvement sent him into the political wilderness, where he would effectively remain until his famous, but brief, rise to leadership during WWII, quickly ended after the war by Clement Attlee.
Despite this, however, the Allies/Entente Powers won the First World War, and this saw the splitting up of the defeated Ottoman Empire, which had thrown its lot in with Germany and the Kaiser. What was left of the Ottoman Empire became Turkey, which was threatened by an invasion from a nationalist Greek Army as well as the figurehead government being used by Allied powers. As a result of this, Ataturk sets up a government-in-exile in Ankara to counter the Ally-controlled Sultan in Istanbul and manages to defeat the Greek Army in 1921 before pushing it back out of Anatolia in 1922 and reestablishing Turkey as an international power. Note that during this period, while the Pashas are in charge, atrocities like the Armenian Genocide (1915) are occurring. While some of the more violent outbursts of groups like the Young Turks would be toned down under Ataturk's reign, the repression toward ethnic minorities and particularly the Kurds was already occurring and would continue.
It is at this point, after WWI, that Ataturk turns his attention to bringing Turkey into the “civilized” world via authoritarian tactics. Modernity is embraced but it comes at the sacrifice of tradition, as exhibited by the repression of Islam as well as various ethnic minorities, even to the point of abandoning the old Ottoman imperial palaces and implementing a new Turkish alphabet. Ataturk’s attempt at modernity and civilization severed Turkey’s ties with its past and cemented him as a ruler with absolute power, particularly after the failed Izmir Plot in 1926 allowed him to use an attempted assassination to consolidate power. After this point, as the author describes him, Ataturk does not act as a dictator but as a king, who gives his orders and then entertains himself. Frankly, this kind of splitting hairs I don’t think makes much difference: he’s still a guy unrestrained by laws sitting around and delegating tasks while only doing what he finds personally entertaining, such as creating new names for he and his companions or new Turkish words borrowed from other languages to match Turkey’s new culture.
There were, however, positive changes such an expansion of women’s rights (although Ataturk’s private treatment of women, particularly his wife and the way he handled their divorce, leaves something to be desired; he also divorced her using a traditional religious method approximately six months before banning such methods being legal). Although Ataturk put in place the appearance of democracy, it was a sham, as so often is the case in authoritarian nations; in addition, political opponents, including former allies, were hounded out of office, arrested, and on occasion killed; freedom of the press was, naturally, nonexistent, and the opposition party was banned (the Free Republican Party was initially created at Ataturk’s behest, but dissolved after a fleeting ~3 month existence for being a bit too successful as an opposition party and having the audacity to win 31 of 502 seats).
Ataturk ultimately died from cirrhosis of the liver in 1938. The description of his growing struggles is a bit morbid, but interesting to someone who has experienced more than a few times the ill-effects of overindulgence. Suffice it to say that the author’s downplaying of Ataturk’s drinking throughout the book is revealed here; you do not end up with cirrhosis before 60 without some serious, extended bouts of heavy drinking.
Turkey presents a similar problem as China: was the human cost of rapid modernization worth it? This is, of course, a subjective philosophical question of ethics. I am reminded of a professor in college who told us that while it can be easy for some to say that the cost was worth it, this disregards altogether the suffering of every life that labored to create these monuments—either to progress or pride and arrogance. The author certainly takes pains to point out the positive results of Ataturk's and gives a rushed, unconvincing rebuttal to criticisms of Ataturk that takes up the very end of the book.
Ultimately, Ataturk’s phantom will continue to influence the history of modern Turkey, for better or for worse and only time, and further studies on the long-term impact of his actions, will allow us to come to terms with his legacy. As ever with history, it’s also essential to try and not project our modern-day morality onto a figure from the past, but instead to try and grasp their actions within the cultural and historical context in which they were made—Ataturk is certainly a great example of this, and attempting to paint him as a bit of a modern feminist in regards to women’s rights, as Mango seems to do a few points, comes across flat and reflects the difficulties in trying to place modern sensibilities on people who would not be considered that way (seen in his paternalistic relations and treatment of wife Latife). I also suspect that some of the reforms to women’s schooling wouldn’t exactly be considered impressive by women either then or today; most women probably will not find being taught how to “make paper flowers” in addition to “child care, dress-making, and household management” to be anything close to liberation, let alone equal rights. They might do well in an origami contest, but in personal experience I have found things like history, science, math, and literature to be a bit more helpful in life. As someone with clumsy fingers, I may admittedly be biased here.
Lingering questions that require addressing: did Ataturk’s reign, and death in office, set the stage and the precedent for someone like Erdogan and signal from the start Turkey’s government had a weakness toward authoritarianism? Did his repression of Islam and religion lead to the more militant, violent forms we see cropping up throughout the Middle East today, and which spurred a religious backlash within Turkey after his death? Questions are easier than answers, but given its rising prominence in geopolitical affairs the last few years, this certainly won’t be the last of my reading about Turkey; possible further ideas for reading include Twice a Stranger by Bruce Clark, Turkey: A Modern History by Erik Zurcher, Osman’s Dream by Caroline Finkel, Ataturk in the Nazi Imagination by Stefan Ihrig, and Ataturk by George W. Gawrych. Grey Wolf, a biography of Ataturk published in the early thirties for a Western audience, may also be a book of interest, albeit obviously outdated and not informative of the last half-decade of his life.
At the end of the day, it’s impossible to put this book above three stars: there is the issue of the book being bogged down with details, but that is a standard-issue complaint with history books to the point of being meaningless. Sometimes, however, it can be difficult to follow the thread of the narrative and this is a knock against the book, especially when it contributes to a fuzzy understanding of important events like the displacement of Greeks, Ataturk’s ties to suspicious deaths of political opponents, the Armenian Genocide, and I’m sure the list could go on. This feeds back into the real reason that I cannot rate the book more than three stars: the bias is so transparent most readers should be able to see through it, but it nevertheless undermines the credibility of the book (and is the cost of Mango’s continued access to the Turkish archives Western historians would struggle to get).
And to think back in high school when I was assigned to learn about Mustafa Kemal, I blew off the assignment and joked that he was famous for popularizing the saying "Ataturk" in Turkey, the Turkish equivalent of the US "attaboy!" Sorry about that one, Mr. McGuire—though now I do wonder whether that teacher had read Mango's biography.
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