Selected Books
Turkey in Europe & Europe in Turkey
Turgut Özal

From Atatürk's Reforms to the Present Day

" The movement of the Turks has maintained a constant direction for centuries. We have always advanced from the East to the West."
Atatürk,1924

At the end of the First World War the population of the Ottoman Empire found itself on the brink of poverty and despair. Eight years of war had swept a whole generation of youth into the cold night of eternity. When the armistice was signed the Ottoman armies were already positioned within the present borders of the Republic. Only Anatolia remained under Ottoman control-Anatolia, motherland of the Turks since the time of the crusades. Admittedly there were Christian communities living there too, but they were not sufficiently numerous to justify cession of the territory. If a reasonable peace treaty had been proposed to the Sublime Porte it would probably have been accepted, given the traumatic circumstances in which the people were struggling. However, this did not happen.

The peace treaty imposed on the Sublime Porte on 10 August 1920 at Sèvres provided for the distribution of the rich regions of Anatolia among the Allied Powers, leaving to the Turks only a remnant of territory on which it would have been difficult to establish even the shadow of a state. The Treaty of Sèvres was worse for the Turks even than the Treaty of Versailles had been for the Germans. In fact it virtually put an end to the very existence of the Turks in Anatolia. It seemed that the principles of President Wilson did not apply to the Turks. Post-war Western civilization was refusing them the right to live.

The occupation of western Anatolia by the Greeks and the signing of the Sèvres treaty aroused the Turkish people from their war-weary, impoverished, and demoralized condition. This colossal injustice, which went beyond insulting words, galvanized the entire population. Instead of weeping over their fate, they devoted themselves wholeheartedly to the supreme task of seizing the national territory from the Allied Powers-no matter what the cost. It was of no importance to them that the territory was occupied, that the national army had no weapons, that an armed struggle against the occupier did not even seem possible. It was no longer even a question of life or death: the treaty of Sèvres had already dealt the death-blow to the Turkish nation.

They knew that it could only be brought to life again by seizing independence and accepting nothing less. The hopelessness of the situation only rendered the struggle more heroic, and its leader more valiant.

I will not try to describe the suffering we experienced throughout this impossible combat, nor shall I recount in detail our national war of liberation for, I believe, it would not be fair to expect foreigners to feel and comprehend such a profoundly national experience.

Izmir was liberated on 9 September 1922 and the armistice was signed on 11 October 1922. Peace negotiations were begun on 20 November 1922 and, after unbelievable difficulties, led to the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne on 24 July 1923.

On 1 November 1922 the Grand National Assembly of Turkey had abolished the Sultanate, ostensibly to circumvent Allied attempts to set the Sublime Porte and the National Government against each other round the negotiating table. However, Mustafa Kemal had in fact been considering the abolition of the Sultanate for a long time in order to establish the principle of national sovereignty, and had seized this opportunity to bring about this major reform.

The Lausanne peace treaty represented the end of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of the Republican era. The Capitulations were abolished, and a plan for repayment of Ottoman debts put in hand. Turkey's borders were recognized internationally, the Straits Convention was signed, and equilibrium was re-established in the Aegean Sea.

As a result of her fight for national independence Turkey was the only country among those defeated during the First World War to succeed in imposing her own conditions for peace on the victorious Allies.

The collapse of the Empire had made possible the creation of a nation-state in Anatolia. The national frontiers of the young Republic excluded the territories occupied by Christian populations, so that Anatolia was now inhabited by a homogeneous people, speaking the same language and sharing the same cultural and religious values.

The new Republic speedily and amicably negotiated with Greece the exchange of their respective Turkish and Greek populations. The signing of this accord solved the question of the Christian minorities, who had always constituted the stumbling block in the Sublime Porte's relations both with the European powers and with our neighboring countries.

The nation-state did not come into being unaided. Although the Republic was proclaimed on 29 October 1923, the Caliphate retained a certain influence, which was actually on the increase. The Muslims of the Indian peninsula remained strongly attached to the moral authority of the Caliphate. The survival of this politico-religious institution therefore threatened the very foundations of the young Republic, and it was finally abolished by Mustafa Kemal on 3 March 1924.

The completion of Turkey's break with imperial institutions was thus accomplished. Recourse to the Shari'a was ended, as was the ministry of Evkaf (religious endowments). With the suppression of the authority of the Sheykh al-Islam, the religious bureaucracy crumbled. Secularization of religious schools and the standardization of teaching programmes followed. Renunciation of the Shari'a had considerable repercussions on family and social life. Religious courts disappeared. Sects and their rites were prohibited.

The juridical vacuum left by all these abolition's was filled by the adoption on 4 October 1926 of a new Civil Code, modeled on that of Switzerland. It prohibited polygamy and repudiation, and guaranteed the equality of men and women before the law. This reform achieved the secularization of the judicial system. All that remained was to amend the Constitution of 1924 to exclude from it the clause: `The religion of the Turkish State is Islam.' This amendment was passed on 10 April 1928.

One of the most important of Atatürk's reforms was the change from Arabic characters to the Roman alphabet, a reform which temporarily rendered the whole population illiterate. Its purpose was not only the education of young people but also, and especially, the severance of links with the past.

All Atatürk's reforms had as their aim the inculcation of Western values into Turkish society: hence the elimination of words of Arabian and Persian origin, replacing the fez by the felt hat, changing from the lunar calendar to the solar calendar, using family names instead of religious titles, the substitution of Sunday as a holiday instead of Friday, and the granting of political rights to women.

According to Abdullah Cevdet, `civilization' meant `Western civilization' to reformist Turks. Atatürk was convinced of it. This is what he wrote on the subject:

Peoples who are not civilized are condemned to remain under the domination of those who are. And civilization is the West, the modern world, of which Turkey must be a part if she wishes to survive. The nation is determined to adopt exactly and completely, both in substance and in form, the way of life and the methods which contemporary civilization offers to all nations.

Atatürk was steeped in Western culture and readily assumed the mantle of pro-Western reformist. In fact he was bringing to fruition reforms which had begun in the reign of Selim III. Although the importance of Atatürk's role in their achievement remains undeniable, it must be admitted that circumstances were a powerful ally in his success. It was the defeat of the Sublime Porte at the end of the First World War that guaranteed the pro-Western direction of the reforms, while the victory of the National Government over the Allied invasion forces facilitated the acceptance of Western values by the Turkish people. The success of the reforms was linked to the fact that they were implemented by a leader who had struggled against Western imperialism with great determination and who could not therefore - the people were convinced - be accused of imitating the West.

Despite the favorable circumstances, the Turkish reformist movement at times found itself up against difficulties. Some historians have claimed that the Turks frequently wavered between one civilization and another. This is not so. The westernization process lasted two centuries in Turkey, and suffered many setbacks before it reached its objective.

Westernizing Reforms: a General Reassessment

At this stage it would perhaps be appropriate to take an overall look at the westernizing reforms and to see where we stand as regards the West.

Western civilization, which had originated in western Europe, gradually penetrated everywhere. It integrated the world economically. Its political system with its institutions serve as a model. Its cultural values dominate the peoples who belong to other civilizations. Its military might embraces the globe.

In this context, the crucial questions are: How could countries outside the West best defend themselves against this overpowering force? Is it possible and desirable for them to become westernized by means of all-encompassing reforms? Or should they modernize through selective borrowing from the West while preserving their cultural heritage as the basis of their identity?

In face of the Western challenge, a country's first instinctive reaction is to embrace its own traditional values and institutions. As might have been expected, the Ottoman zealotry of the seventeenth century, while delaying the necessary reforms by a hundred years, failed. Then came the Herodian reforms initiated by Sultan Selim III.

Only with Mustafa Kemal and his companions did the westernizing reforms become all-encompassing. I think that, all in all, the Turkish experience is successful. Especially in comparison with other young nation-states such as Germany and Italy, Turkey is unique in that she achieved a peaceful transition to a two-party regime.

At this point I wish to reproduce some passages from two books of a well-known Western historian, for Western readers are familiar with his views which we have been discussing more or less on the same lines if not with the same terminology.

He writes:

(Turkey's) leaders. . have carried `Herodianism' (Westernism) to its logical conclusion in a revolution which, for ruthless thoroughness, puts even the two classical Japanese revolutions of the seventh and the nineteenth centuries into shade. Here in Turkey is a revolution which, instead of confining itself to a single plane, like ... successive economic and political and aesthetic and religious revolutions in the West, has taken place on all these planes simultaneously and has thereby convulsed the whole life of the Turkish people from the heights to the depths of social experience and activity.

This. . . revolution in Turkey has been carried through with such spirit, under such serious handicaps and against such heavy odds, that any generous-minded observer will make allowances for its blunders. . . and will wish it success in its formidable task. . . It would be particularly ungracious in a Western observer to cavil or scoff: for, after all, these Turkish (reformers) have been trying to turn their people and their country into something which since Islam and the West first met we have always denounced them for not being by nature: they have been trying. . . to produce replicas, in Turkey, of a Western nation and a Western State.

Certainly we did not like the outrageous old-fashioned Turkish 'Zealot'. . . So long as he prided himself on being `a peculiar people' we set ourselves to humble his pride by making his peculiarity odious: and so we called him `the Unspeakable Turk' until we pierced his psychological armor and goaded him into that 'Herodian' revolution. . . Yet now that, under the goad of our censure, he has changed his tune and has searched out every means of making himself indistinguishable from the nations around him, we are embarrassed and even inclined to be indignant. . .

The author then poses the crucial question as to what would be added to civilization if the aim of the Turkish westernizing reforms is achieved in the fullest sense. His negative answer to this question is twofold. Firstly, he emphasizes the imitative and even mimetic aspect of westernizing reforms and claims that these reforms cannot provide a creative contribution to civilization. Secondly, he points out that only a small élite benefit from these reforms while great masses are bypassed. He concludes that although westernization is an incomparably more effective response than the reactionary rejectionist approach to the inexorable `Western question', it does not really offer a solution.

Mr. Erdal Ynönü, leader of the opposition social democratic party, SHP, publishes in a book (Letters from Father Ínönü to son Inönü Bilgi, Yayynevi Ankara, 1988, pp. 78-9) a letter dated 23 November 1948 by his father, the late Ysmet Inönü, the then President of the Republic, on the occasion of the visit of Toynbee, during which the latter apparently insisted on the imitative nature of our westernizing reforms and associated Christianity with western civilization.

Although this argumentation has valid points, I think there are some errors in it. Above all, Western civilization seems to have been taken as if it were an isolated and self-contained phenomenon developed out of a vacuum. This approach, which is not compatible with the perception of `the history of all the known civilizations, surviving and extinct, as a unity', is ethnocentric.

It should be recalled that the West in the first place borrowed its religion from Syriac civilization, and later its rationalist élan from Hellenic through Islamic civilization.

On the other hand, imitative reforms and traditionalist reactions to them usually take place concomitantly in a country which confronts an external threat from a stronger civilization. In other words, no country can be qualified as purely `Herodian' or `Zealotist', except perhaps for a few extreme examples or for limited periods. Furthermore, imitative reforms, no matter how sweeping they are, cannot result in a total negation of the cultural values of the society in question. Religion, language, customs, and other related cultural values which had developed in history are extremely resilient in face of the intrusion of an alien civilization.

Therefore westernizing reforms cannot destroy the personality of the borrowing nation. Even the military defence of a nation for a given geography as fatherland against the aggresor is enough for the existence of a national identity.

Historically speaking, imitating reformers tended to borrow the rational aspects of an alien civilization, be it living or extinct, whereas bigots, usually represented by a Church, have resisted them. To mention an example of a Western borrower from Islamic rationalism, I would point to Frederick II as a Herodian who was excommunicated five times by the Catholic Church, which was Zealotist.

Indeed, the reform process is a synthetic one which is brought about by a constant interaction between borrowers or modernists and traditionalists or conservatives. Purely imitative reforms are therefore impossible in reality. What is more interesting in the case of Turkey is that both modernists and conservatives were in favour of borrowing, the former emphasizing the cultural borrowings, the latter the economic and technological.

Another erroneous conclusion stems, partly, from the different time-scales applied to the two borrowing processes, namely the Western and the non-Western. The massive borrowings of the Renaissance, which began in the thirteenth century and continued for a further two to three centuries, had ample time to permeate the Western societies and to come to fruition in the eighteenth century as Western Civilization in the contemporary sense of the word. If we put aside the now discontinued Russian experiment, the Ottoman-Turkish Westernization process, although older but not necessarily denser in comparison with that of Japan, is barely two hundred years old. Unless a longer historical perspective is taken, one might wrongly conclude that the unavoidably imitative character of the earlier phase of borrowing would necessarily bring about an uncreative replica of the borrowed civilization in the later stages of the evolution. It is therefore too early to qualify Turkey as a non-creative `mimic' of Western civilization. If technology is taken in modern society as the main factor for innovation and change, it should be kept in mind that Japan was greatly imitative as late as the 1960s, after which Japanese creativity displayed a strong originality in its massively increasing output.

Turkish and Japanese Modernization Processes: a Comparison

Perhaps it would be interesting to examine to what extent the westernizing reforms have achieved their aim of creating a modern society in Turkey. In this respect a comparison between Turkey and Japan is quite revealing.

As I said before, the westernizing reforms-or what is sometimes called `defensive modernization'-started more or less at the same time in Turkey and Japan. To review the important difference in the respective achievements of these two contemporary modernization efforts and to analyze the underlying causes may help us understand where Turkey stands with respect to this process and where she is heading in the future.

It is impossible to envisage more favourable geographic conditions for the development of a modern nation-state than those enjoyed by Japan, an island kingdom of remarkably homogenous racial, religious, and linguistic composition.

Nineteenth-century Turkey, on the other hand, was an empire stretching over parts of three continents, lacking racial, linguistic, and religious homogeneity and possessing few natural boundaries. A more refractory set of ingredients for a modern nation-state is difficult to conceive. It was necessary for the Ottoman Empire to disintegrate even further before a modern and much smaller Turkish national state could emerge.

On the basis of her geographic advantages, Japan rapidly overcame the `crisis of identity' which is inherent in the nation-building process. The Meiji leadership had only to assemble a racially and culturally homogenous population within the framework of the natural boundaries and to transform the long-standing concept of national unity into a strong sense of identity.

In the Ottoman Empire, on the other hand, the usual tendency was to keep imperial boundaries in the most expansive and inclusive terms. Consequently, Turkey did not resolve until 1923 the territorial aspect of the crisis of national identity, for she had had to try Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism in order to see their futility.

All contemporary societies embody both traditional and modern elements in their social structure and culture. The pace and success of modernization efforts depend to a great extent on whether these dual structures are mutually reinforcing or antithetical. On the other hand, the compatibility of traditional and modern elements in the society is the key to the solution of the `crisis of identity'.

There are many instances of reinforcing dualism in the Japanese case. The most conspicuous, perhaps, is the political role of the Emperor. The Meiji reformers turned this old institution into an extraordinarily effective symbol and instrument of national unity, discipline, and sacrifice. A somewhat comparable use was made of State Shinto, the Samurai ethic, and the traditional forms of hierarchical social organization as a means of maximizing order, obedience, and discipline.

The Turkish experience was less favorable in this respect. The Sultan, unlike the Japanese Emperor, was an actual ruler. He was personally involved in the modernization process and was thus compelled to face the vagaries of politics which impaired the value of the Sultan as a symbol. In the eyes of the leading modernizes he was the quintessence of backwardness and reaction because of his main role as the guardian of the tradition. Similarly, the major thrust of Islam and the Ulema came to be considered adverse to modernization. The most ardent Turkish modernizes of the last century, while disclaiming opposition to religion as such, were imbued with hostility to the Islamic establishment. This situation precluded any possibility of reinforcing dualism in Turkey, whereas a considerably larger proportion of the traditional Japanese heritage was capable of conversion and use for modernizing purposes.

Both the Turks and the Japanese had carried out massive cultural borrowings in the past, the former from the Arabs and the Persians, and the latter from the Chinese. As I have pointed out earlier, the psychological adjustments essential to modernization have taken much longer in Turkey. For the Turks, considering themselves the chief exponents of Islam and having created one of the largest empires in history, looked down on those from whom they were supposed to borrow. Not handicapped by any such sentiments, the Japanese quite readily recognized the practical superiority of Western technology and many Western institutions and were able to borrow them with a minimum of delay and cultural shock.

This adaptability of the traditional Japanese cultural elements to modern technology was one of the main factors in the reinforcement of dualism which was lacking in Turkey.

There existed in Japan no predominant organized religion of national scope with a powerful hold on the people and no clerical body comparable to the Ulema. Buddhism was primarily other-worldly, and Confucianism was more philosophy than religion, while Shinto did not exist as an organized national faith at the early stage of modernization. Japan was thus spared the problems of disentangling religion and secularization which have so seriously beset the endeavors of Turkey.

The adoption of secularism following the foundation of the Republic represented a clear break with the Ottoman and Islamic past. Although the void was partially filled by pre-Islamic culture a thousand years old, this pre-Islamic culture was unable to take root because its organic continuity had been interrupted for so long.

Another typical example of this cultural impoverishment was the reform of the Turkish language. There were many difficulties in replacing ideas and words of Arab and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents, the new words derived from Turkish roots having to convey several senses and shades of meaning. Even if it was easier to understand, our national language in its new form, purified and reactivated after long neglect, had lost much of its capacity to transmit a culture.

Thus in Turkey the crisis of identity has been exacerbated by the rejection of the historic and traditional component of the culture and its medium, i.e. the language. The remaining part after amputation was too narrow to serve as basis for the new national identity. In the absence of a strong and well-defined sense of national identity, the westernizing reforms not only failed to achieve political modernization and economic development to the desired extent but, at the same time, by further alienating the traditional elements and the masses from the modernization process, they created a deep-rooted polarization in the society.

The birth of the nation-state in the West, as in Japan, was a natural progression from the establishment of a national market composed of regional markets. It was the amalgamation of regional cultures into a new overall synthesis that created the national culture, which itself then became endowed with a perspective wider than any of the individual regional cultures. The Ottoman Empire followed a contrary evolution. As it disintegrated and lost the newly independent regions together with all their cultural values, the Empire became a nation-state by reduction. Hence the cultural vision of the Republic has been unduly constricted, the detrimental effect of which has been felt also in the economic field which could not be opened up to the world until the 1980s.

Another point of comparison is the `crisis of security'. Since modernization efforts have come about in response to encroachments by the West, this crisis is deeply felt by the reforming society. The period during which Japan was seriously concerned about Western threats, which were largely economic in nature, was brief. The ways in which Japan was involved came at a later point in her course of development and were of her own choosing. And, with the exception of the Second World War, they were relatively brief and uniformly resulted in Japanese victories.

Had Japan been situated on the main path of imperialist expansion across Asia rather than at its most distant terminus, it is doubtful whether the results of modernization would have been quite so constructive.

The Ottomans, from the very beginning, were in continuous contact with European military power; the Empire lay at the crossroads of three continents. The Near East throughout history has been the most invaded region of the globe and Japan among the least. Although Turkey never completely lost her statehood or national identity, she was for centuries the object of Western attacks and ambitions. This politically disintegrating impact of the West on Turkey rendered the modernization efforts weak and intermittent until the Empire was abandoned. It was only with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 and membership of NATO in 1952 that Turkey finally achieved a reasonable degree of national security.

It is noteworthy, on the other hand, that the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the consequent withdrawal of Russia from the First World War greatly facilitated the Turkish war of independence, not only by relieving the heavy pressure on the Eastern Front, but also by Russia's supporting financially and materially the war efforts of Turkey.

In terms of the consequences of such experiences for the process of modernization, a moderate, manageable, and not-too-prolonged threat to national security is apt to provide a useful stimulus, as in the case of Japan. But a threat of truly desperate dimensions, such as that confronting Turkey, is apt to focus a country's total human and material resources and thus to complicate seriously the drive towards modernization and economic development.

In view of the above, it would be appropriate to identify the crisis of economic development which is so crucial to modernization. The Meiji leadership embarked on far-reaching endeavours to modernize the economy and devoted a large proportion of national revenues to these efforts. The economic development imparted a sense of dynamism and progress to the society. This success contributed greatly to the growing sense of popular and élite identification with the process of modernization as a whole. It provided, for most of those concerned, tangible evidence that the new ways were working and that all of the upsetting changes attendant upon modernization were worth the price.

In the previous chapters I have tried to explain the economic difficulties and obstacles besetting the Ottoman Empire. For us the crisis of security and crisis of identity largely predominated in the agenda, relegating the crisis of economic development to the sidelines. The frontal attack on economic problems became a priority with the founding of the Republic. Mustafa Kemal's ideas for the economy had been known since the Congress of Izmir opened on 17 February 1923-that is to say, before the Treaty of Lausanne. With regard to economic development, Atatürk's viewpoint was that of a liberal economist. He placed fundamental importance on a market economy and the role of private enterprise.

However, the departure of the Christians had left few businessmen in Turkey, and the country had been ravaged by so many wars that available capital was minimal. Private enterprise therefore lacked the resources to enable it to assume responsibility for Turkey's economic development.

In addition, a world economic crisis occurred in October 1929. Although Turkey's agricultural production was sufficient for her own needs, the fall in the price of raw materials reduced the total value of her exports and caused a deficit in her trade balance. It became necessary to devalue the currency and adopt measures for financial stabilization. As a result there were enormous difficulties in ensuring essential imports. Such extreme circumstances doubly hampered the efforts of the private sector to achieve economic development.

However, the crisis which ravaged Western economies in no way affected the Soviet economy, whose growth seemed spectacular. The USSR had supplied arms to the Turkish national liberation movement and had given the neighbouring young Republic important political support, so relations between the two countries were already friendly. The world economic crisis encouraged closer economic cooperation between them, and in 1933 Turkey introduced its first five-year plan for industrial development. The first State enterprises for the production of textiles, paper, glassware, and cement came into being.

These undertakings had to overcome serious technical and managerial difficulties, but they eventually came to be regarded virtually as training schools for managers and specialized workers. A report published in 1951 by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development noted that the Turkish public sector had made important progress during this period.

Atatürk's State enterprises were born of necessity rather than ideology. When the first measures of State control were adopted, Atatürk remarked that he would not have believed that such an ideology could have penetrated Turkey in this way. However, the private sector also developed slowly but surely, and agricultural production always remained in the hands of private owners.

Nevertheless, the State enterprise movement, which lasted thirty years, brought with it a certain systematization, and Atatürk decided before his death that it was necessary to return to a more liberal economic policy.

Economic development in the modern sense, however, started in the decade of the 1950s. The legal and cultural reforms of the early republican era therefore created some misgivings in the mass of the people who did not enjoy the economic rewards of the modernization process. At the same time, the cultural reforms which were suitable mainly for the urban segments of the population failed to reach the rural masses who represented eighty per cent of the people. They tended to identify the cultural upheaval created by the reforms with economic misery, and blamed the ruling élite for the situation.

Of great political importance was the level of expectations harboured by the respective populations in the early stages of modernization. In the Japan of 1890 voting, civil rights, and responsible government were unfamiliar concepts, and practically no one looked to Government as the proper source of political security, equal opportunity, or guaranteed prosperity.

In this sense timing was again of assistance to the Japanese. In the Ottoman Empire, the movement towards individual rights started with the Tanzimat in 1839, and the struggle for freedom and constitutional monarchy in the 1860s, under the pressure of the West aimed mainly at improving the conditions of the Christian minorities. Since then, popular ambitions for political rights and freedoms have always outgrown economic capacity.

As compared to the level of economic development, demands for political participation in Turkey have been stronger than in Japan. The experience of political participation in Turkey since the 1876 Constitution has therefore been quite uneven, alternating between short periods of liberalism and long periods of authoritarianism. With the 1950 elections, however, voting became universal and democratic periods have been much longer.

In Turkey, popular expectations from the system were ostensibly political rather than economic. The Young Turks aroused expectations of individual and national political expression. But behind political aspirations there always lay economic expectations which were poorly articulated. With the advent of competitive party politics, a sudden wave of economic expectation swept the countryside, and once again performance lagged behind aspiration. From the early 1960s onward, successive governments have inherited a thoroughly aroused participant population with an unprecedented awareness of their economic needs and expectations. The destabilizing effects on the system of this disequilibrium between needs and output led every ten years to internal disorders which required much ingenuity, wisdom, and firmness on the part of governments, the failure of which prompted the military interventions.

It is interesting to note also the different approaches adopted to the problem of public education by Japan and Turkey. Even, in the 1860s, forty to fifty per cent of all Japanese boys and fifteen per cent of the girls were receiving formal schooling, a level of performance matched in very few European states. Japan chose at the outset to concentrate on mass elementary education. Large-scale concern with secondary and higher education came later. Turkey chose at first to stress more élitist and selective types of education at the expense of mass popular education. This aspect may explain the élitist approach of the Turkish reformers, including those of the republican period, in terms of westernizing rather than modernizing the society.

Differential qualities of the Turkish and Japanese leaders also played an important role in their respective modernization processes. Political leadership in Japan is a collegial phenomenon and the decision-making is based on consensus and committee deliberations. One of the most salient characteristics of modern Japanese history is therefore the almost total absence of `great men'. The Turkish leadership springs from a cult of the hero as warrior, statesman, and educator a belief in the great man to mould the course of history. Atatürk is a prototype of this ideal. Consequences are manifold. Decision-making was associated with the highly personalized and hierarchical patterns of a narrow circle. What is perhaps more important, the reforms initiated and implemented by the leader-saviour turn into a historic legacy and his followers become guardians of this legacy, constantly striving to keep them intact, thus greatly reducing the flexibility which is needed at the later stages of modernization. Furthermore, this cult of the saviour has set an enviable example for later politicians, who have readily assumed the task of saving the country from their opponents, whom they considered the main cause of the difficulties besetting the country.

This attitude of the political élites stemmed from some historical coincidences rather than differences in their respective political cultures. The fact that in Japan the Emperor embodied the supreme values of national symbol and source of political legitimacy of the regime did not allow any protagonist in the leadership to rise to the stature of great man. In Turkey, however, the abolition of the Sultanate, which having been fully involved in the running of the Government and the implementation of reforms, was held responsible for the final dissolution of the Empire, created a legitimacy vacuum in the transition to the republican regime. This was filled by the charismatic leadership of Atatürk.

The charisma of Atatürk also compensated in the eyes of the masses for the lack of legitimacy which was brought about by the radical secularization of the society in which Islam had been the backbone of the culture, law, and even politics.

It may well be that an indication of the existence of this problem is to be found in the periodically increasing harsh and acrimonious criticism so often directed at the high offices of the Turkish State after the death of Atatürk, and perhaps to a certain extent after the presidency of Ynönü.

Another aspect related to leadership is the struggle over who should assume the responsibility for modernization. Japan managed first to delay such a crisis until 1877 and then to solve it in the Satsuma Rebellion, with no new challenge until the First World War. In Turkey, however, there was intense rivalry for leadership from the beginning of the process in the late eighteenth century down to the 1908 Revolution. This constitutes one important reason for the considerable delay in Turkey between the first impulse to reform and the final adoption of an all-embracing programme. At first the conflict was between the Sultan on the one hand and the Janissaries and Ayan on the other. Later it became a conflict among rival groups pursuing competing reform policies: Tanzimat ministers against Young Ottomans, Young Turks against Abdülhamid, Kemalist reformers against `reactionaries', left against right.

Despite the polarization and power struggle, from their beginning at the end of the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, the westernization reforms never ceased, the differences in emphasis of the various reformers in no way hindering the continuity of the process. The so-called `progressive' forces gave priority to socio-cultural reforms, while the `conservatives' concentrated on economic reforms.

Political Polarization and Instability in the Regime

In the absence of any reform movement arising from below and without the participation of dynamic social forces, the political polarization, whence the crisis of identity, was inevitable. Although it remained dormant under Atatürk and during the single-party Government which followed, the differences were further accentuated by the establishment of democracy in 1945.

This polarization was behind the ten-year political struggle between the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Democratic Party (DP), both distant relatives of the Union and Progress Party. The struggle led to the military intervention of 27 May 1960.

The Democratic Party, which came to power in 1950, reversed the policies of its predecessors. Support prices and subsidies were introduced to accelerate agricultural development and benefit the peasant masses, and a more liberal economic policy encouraged rapid industrialization while State enterprises kept their dominant place in the economy. However, the resulting external indebtedness and the favourable attitude of the Party to foreign investments reawakened old fears stemming from the Capitulations of the Ottoman era. In addition, its Westernism encompassed a moderate attitude to religion which was considered to be contrary to secularism.

Nevertheless, the decade of the 1950s was the precursor of the consequences of democracy and in this perspective was eminently progressive in nature. It was a bizzare turn of political fortunes that this first truly democratic experience came to be considered as reactionary. Indeed, the 1960 military intervention and all that it brought together was a reaction to democracy in the sense that it aimed at going back to the traditional way of imposing élite values from above.

After 1960 the battle for social rights predominated. The progressive/reactionary polarization became a left/right contest. All the parties fought energetically in speech and writing but, once in power, tended to follow very similar `populist' economic policies amounting to control of agricultural prices and the promise of high wages to workers.

The two largest parties championed import-substituting industrialization and favored centralized planning of the economy with State enterprises as the driving force. Their rhetoric was designed to emphasize such differences as there were between them while camouflaging the fundamental similarities of their policies.

Secularism, one of the subjects at issue between them, had been relegated to the background. One of the parties wanted to change the established order, the other wished to preserve it. I have to say that the `revolutionary' programme of the former was difficult to put into practice as it was more romantic and mystical than ideological.

Its proposed aim was to industrialize while also establishing social justice. This would be done by means of labour-managed enterprises on a basis of equality rather than on creative initiative. The same result would be achieved in agriculture through an equal distribution of land. But, like almost all revolutionaries, they excluded from their concept of `people' and `masses' all those who did not think like themselves.

The polarization of the period 1960-80 had two consequences. Although the international economic crisis which began during the seventies made it risky to introduce `populist' policies, both parties nevertheless continued to implement them while they were in power. The result was the bankruptcy of the economy. Exports remained at such a low level that they did not even cover the cost of our petroleum imports. With inflation increasing, and with no means of curbing demand, the only recourse was to price control. A black market appeared and the hoarding of goods began. Shortages and imports under licence enabled a few people to amass considerable fortunes.

The second result of the bitter struggle between the parties was the creation of conditions in which an armed struggle occurred, particularly among the young. Helped by the intervention of foreign powers, terrorism erupted, each of the parties holding the other responsible for its activities.

Gradually it became evident that the Government was not winning the battle against terrorist violence. Each day an average of twenty people met their death. Law and order had broken down.

Under the weight of this serious political, social, and economic crisis, the democratic regime collapsed. The intervention of the army, in spite of the military's serious reluctance, became the only way out.

It is only since 1980 that anarchy has been eradicated and the essential functions of the State restored to democratic institutions.

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