‘Mad’ about Kemalism: An Early Republican Satire

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Few paradigms have seemed as thoroughly dominant as the Kemalist paradigm in Turkey since the 1920s. Adherence to this paradigm has required the uncritical acceptance not only of the values and practices of laicism and progress in the national present, but the stark version of history that came to accompany and underpin Kemalism—namely that in the 1920s there was an abrupt and successful reorientation of Turkey from “east” to “west,” from the darkness of superstition and religion to the light of progress and science. “East” was associated with, among other things, the Arabic and Persian languages, a range of Islamic practices and beliefs, and most manifestations of tradition as it had been perceived up to that point. Indeed virtually anything associated with the Ottoman past came to be understood as backward and in conflict with the new and modern Kemalist Turkey, and therefore lacking in value. In this light Atatürk’s legal and social reforms—such as the discouragement of the headscarf and the prohibition of the fez, and the alphabet reform which shifted the official language for Turkish from Arabic to a modified Latin script—were and often are still portrayed simplistically as necessary measures applied to a willing populace.

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The Journal Of Ottoman Studies

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The Journal Of Ottoman Studies