Like Sultan Abdülhamit II, Mustafa Kemal knew we had lost the Balkans and expected we would lose the Middle East as well. In his view, it would be impossible to protect the region, rich in energy sources, from the British and French. He also anticipated that Anatolia would be the only place we could keep and believed we could manage to protect our physical existence within the borders of what we now call the “Misak-ı Milli” (National Pact), and so he made plans about the future based on these essential presuppositions. Thus, his main concern was protecting our existence on Anatolian soil, in other words it was about the issue of survivability.One must concede that Mustafa Kemal was displeased with the situation, under immense pressure and even if he was on a knife’s edge in the psychological and political atmosphere, he probably attached special importance to continuing some level of relations with the Muslim world.
For example, he went to Mardin a couple of times, where he had a Christian architect build a beautiful artistic minaret for the historic Şehidiye Mosque. He even personally supervised the construction of the minaret and provided financial support for it. All of these actions were done in line with a long-term goal. He described the “Caliphate,” which the British did not want, as being “cancelled.” This was also in line with a long-term goal. According to him, if one day Muslim people won independence and wanted to replace the caliphate, they could do so by coming together. This was also the idea of Jamal-al-Din Afghani. So until that day, the caliphate would become an inherent part of the collective spirit of the Turkish Parliament. In this way, the caliphate was not completely abolished or “erased” from the face of history, instead it was made obsolete.
Another important detail Mustafa Kemal paid attention to was identifying only non-Muslims as the “minority.” In other words, he limited the minority status to include non-Muslims only. As you know, the Ottoman Empire was comprised of a “Muslim nation,” in which Muslim peoples such as Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Bosnians and Pomaks lived. This is called the dominant nation (milleti hâkime). Why is it the dominant nation?
When the republic adopted the nation-state form and nationalism as the official ideology, non-Muslims became referred to as the “minority” while Muslim people within the Muslim nation were referred to as the “Turkish nation.” In this way people who were under the umbrella of the “Muslim nation” during the Ottoman Empire were transformed into the “Turkish nation” during the period of the republic. Of course there was a desire to have the legal system, education, the economy and law enforcement play an active role in making this transformation possible.
It is for this reason that Turkish nationalists continue to persistently claim that the “Turkish nation” does not refer only to the Turkish race, but instead includes all Muslim people, such as Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Circassians and so on. There are different reasons why the founding members of the republic adopted the Turkish nation concept. According to their assessments, it was not possible to Turkify non-Muslims because their religions would not permit it. In other words, the religion of non-Muslims prevents them from adopting another ethnic identity. As a result of this conclusion, non-Muslims were defined as the minority and placed in a different category. The majority of these people were deported through population exchanges. This is what Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül was referring to when, last year, he said that it wasn’t a bad idea for the purpose of “building a nation.” Pro-Turks believed it was possible to dissolve the Muslim components within the Turkish nation and build a Turkish national identity to replace them.
Constantly using Mustafa Kemal as an excuse in the current power struggle or using him as a shield against reform programs demanded by a wide segment of society is not in line with Mustafa Kemal’s thoughts and the priorities that he focused on during the founding years of the Turkish Republic; to the contrary, it is Kemalism’s process of instrumentalizing Mustafa Kemal.
