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Turkey: Muslim leaders rewriting history to glorify Ottoman Islamic rulers, downplay the secularist Ataturk

May 29, 2020 11:00 am By Robert Spencer

“By contrast, there is the opposite Islamist view. According to this, it was Sultan Vahdettin who did everything. In fact, the Islamist discourse addresses the issue with a conspiratorial approach as if Atatürk was almost pro-British. Now that Islamists are in power in Turkey, they want to change that history.”

Of course. Because Erdogan has for years been working toward reestablishing the Ottoman caliphate. This is just another step in that direction.

“It’s a terrifying sign that we are abandoning rationality.”

Yeah, well, so is everybody else, pal. Join the club.

“Turkey’s Islamist leaders seek to rewrite Ottoman sultans’ role in state history,” Ahval News, May 21, 2020:

Turkey’s Kemalists – followers of the secularist ideology laid out by the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk – were outraged by the May 19 edition of Sabah newspaper, which many saw as an attempt to rewrite the country’s history.

This edition was published on the Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day, a holiday commemorating the beginning of Turkey’s Independence War against foreign powers occupying it after World War One.

Yet alongside Mustafa Kemal, whose success in that war later earned him the surname Atatürk, the father of Turks, Sabah published photographs of the last Ottoman Sultan, Vahdettin, and his Grand Vizier, Damat Ferit Pasha.

These figures are seen in Turkey’s state history as collaborators with the enemy in the Independence War. Sabah’s presentation of the Ottoman leaders as heroes alongside Atatürk on May 19 was an attempt to rehabilitate them and rewrite that history along Islamist lines, scholar Gökhan Bacik told Ahval in a podcast.

“There have been serious divergences in Turkey’s recent history and its interpretation since the Tanzimat,” Bacık said, referring to the series of reforms that aimed to modernise and revitalise the Ottoman state during the 19th century – a period of protracted decline when it suffered crippling defeats at the hands of Western rivals.

“On one hand, there is the official history, and on the other hand, there is the approach of populist Islamists,” he said.

The official history states that, while Istanbul and other parts of Turkey were under occupation following World War One and the sultan’s court was collaborating with the British, “Atatürk went to Samsun on his own and launched the National Struggle, and saved Turkey,” Bacık said.

“By contrast, there is the opposite Islamist view. According to this, it was Sultan Vahdettin who did everything,” he said. “In fact, the Islamist discourse addresses the issue with a conspiratorial approach as if Atatürk was almost pro-British.

“Now that Islamists are in power in Turkey, they want to change that history,” he continued. Thus figures like Vahdettin and Abdülhamid II, the 34th Ottoman sultan whose authoritarian rule earned him the sobriquet “the Red Sultan” before he was deposed in a coup in 1909, are being redefined by Islamist commentators who emphasise positive aspects of their rule….

A survey published this month by Istanbul Economy Research showed that more than half of Turks believed there were secret clauses in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which defined the borders of the modern Turkish Republic.

“Imagine if half of believers believed that some of the Koran’s provisions had been hidden, what kind of a situation would we be in?” Bacık said. “It’s a terrifying sign that we are abandoning rationality.”

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Abdülhamid II, Gökhan Bacik, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Vahdettin


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Comments

  1. Charlie in NY says

    May 29, 2020 at 11:11 am

    “Imagine if half of believers believed that some of the Koran’s provisions had been hidden, what kind of a situation would we be in?” Bacık said. “It’s a terrifying sign that we are abandoning rationality.”

    Yet the faithful are fine with the concept of and justification for abrogation.

  2. mortimer says

    May 29, 2020 at 11:30 am

    Bacık said. “It’s a terrifying sign that we are abandoning rationality.”

    Muslims adamantly turn their faces away from reality in order to pretend they are not in a Death Cult.

    Avoiding reality is second nature to Muslims. They are trained since infancy to ignore discrepancies in religion and never to ask probing questions. They are all compliant automatons of ISLAMTHINK.

    • GreekEmpress says

      May 29, 2020 at 5:58 pm

      Great posts, Charlie and Mortimer—
      But when were Turks EVER rational???

    • gravenimage says

      May 29, 2020 at 9:43 pm

      +1

    • Jayell says

      May 30, 2020 at 12:05 am

      Surely the main thing about ‘Islamthink’ is that you DON’T ‘think’? And I despair of all this talk of ‘islamism’ with the ‘ism’ on the end. It’s just a crude whitewashing attempt to edit out the bits – and all those ‘devout people’ – that render islam unmarkettable for supremacy in the civilised world, in the same way that Abrogation edits out all the bits that didn’t quite fit with the rest of the Great Prophet’s main message in the first place. Which is a nonsense anyway if everything in islamic Holy Writ is supposed have originated with Allah, and this Supreme Being of the Universe couldn’t apparrently get his act together without a commitee of editors. So we just make it up as we go along, just like Mohammed did.

  3. European pagan says

    May 29, 2020 at 11:43 am

    Atatürk made a modern secular Turkey. Writing system. Family names. Rights for women. What is erDOGan’s problem?

    • gravenimage says

      May 29, 2020 at 9:44 pm

      His problem is that this is all un-Islamic.

  4. Emilie Green says

    May 29, 2020 at 11:48 am

    “The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”

    https://www.brainyquote.com/photos_tr/en/g/georgeorwell/385724/georgeorwell1-2x.jpg

    • gravenimage says

      May 29, 2020 at 9:45 pm

      Apt quote from Orwell, Emilie. Yes–this is what Islam does with its destruction of “Jahillya”.

  5. Ordinary Joe says

    May 29, 2020 at 1:31 pm

    Erdogan; tomorrow’s despot today.

    • gravenimage says

      May 29, 2020 at 9:53 pm

      Yesterday’s, as well, since that is where he wants to drag Turkey.

  6. mortimer says

    May 29, 2020 at 2:27 pm

    Quotes from Ataturk:

    -“But these principles (of government) should never be equated to the dogmas of books that are believed to have descended from the sky. We take our inspirations not from the sky and the unseen, but directly from life itself.” – Kamal Ataturk

    -“Islam, this absurd theology of an immoral Bedouin, is a rotting corpse which poisons our lives.” – attributed to Ataturk in La mort d’un Empire (1954) by Jacques Benoist-Méchin (taken from the notes of Gen Kazim Karabekir in “Pasalarin Kavgasi”)

    • Westman says

      May 30, 2020 at 1:01 am

      Ataturk made Turkey great. Erdogan will make it poor and trusted by no one.

    • Rufolino says

      May 30, 2020 at 2:41 pm

      Ataturk was one of the most impressive and admirable statesmen of the 20th century, and his achievements for Turkey immense. “The Grey Wolf” indeed.

      Given that the pygmy Erdogan is currently trying to reverse these achievements and put back the clock, Winston Churchill’s words are once again proved true :

      “There is no more retrograde force in the world than Islam.”

      • Rufolino says

        May 30, 2020 at 2:48 pm

        Of tangential interest, Wallis Simpson met Ataturk when on a Mediterranean cruise with King Edward VIII in 1936. A shrewd woman, she said in later years that Ataturk was the single most impressive personality she had met in her life.

        • gravenimage says

          May 30, 2020 at 10:27 pm

          Unfortunately, Wallis Simpson was also very impressed by Hitler. Not saying there is a lot of similarity, though…

  7. Martin says

    May 29, 2020 at 2:55 pm

    Greece denounces planned ‘fiestas’ outside Hagia Sofia

    Greece denounced on Friday a decision by Turkey to hold a “fiestas” outside Istanbul’s Byzantine-era cathedral Hagia Sophia during Friday’s prayers on the anniversary of the city’s 1453 conquest by Ottoman troops.

    “The fiesta that Ankara is preparing in Hagia Sophia is disturbing and is a matter of denouncement because, among other things, it has been designated a museum of world cultural heritage and is currently being used to promote other purposes,” government spokesman Stelios Petsas said on Friday, speaking to Greek broadcaster SKAI.

    Petsas said this isn’t the first time that Turkey is using the museum for other purposes.

    https://www.ekathimerini.com/253193/article/ekathimerini/news/greece-denounces-planned-fiestas-outside-hagia-sofia
    ===========================================
    Erdogan Announces Islamic Prayer at Hagia Sophia on Anniversary of Fall of Constantinople

    A replica wall of the famous Byzantine-era walls of Contantinople was erected outside Hagia Sophia on Thursday as Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that a prayer to commemorate the 567th anniversary of the fall of Constantinople would be held at the site on Friday.

    “I will take part in (festive) events in Istanbul to commemorate the anniversary of its conquest. Firstly, we will open a hospital in the Sancaktepe district. In the evening, the Al-Fatiha surah of the Quran will be read and prayers will be held in Hagia Sophia,” Erdogan said in a televised address on late Thursday.

    Erdogan has repeatedly irked Athens by suggesting that Hagia Sophia, a UNESCO World Heritage site which now serves as a museum, could be reconverted into a mosque.

    Built in the sixth century, Hagia Sophia was the main seat of the Greek Orthodox Church for almost one thousand years. It remained so until it was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of the city, then-known as Constantinople, in the year 1453.

    Turkey’s secular founder turned the structure into a museum in 1935, and it attracts millions of tourists each year.

    https://eu.greekreporter.com/2020/05/28/erdogan-announces-islamic-prayer-at-hagia-sophia-on-anniversary-of-fall-of-constantinople/

    • Martin says

      May 29, 2020 at 2:59 pm

    • Martin says

      May 29, 2020 at 3:05 pm

      • GreekEmpress says

        May 29, 2020 at 6:02 pm

        Another “in your face, Greece” from Erdogan.
        Anything to rub our noses in the loss of the Hagia Sophia.

  8. keith O says

    May 29, 2020 at 5:08 pm

    As part of our army training we studied Ataturk and I must say that most of us diggers admired him.
    Very smart,entirely patriotic and a ferocious commander on the battlefield, respected by both sides.
    And now this insignificant pratt with delusions of adequacy is trying to make him seem pro British?
    There are a few thousand ANZAC’s still at Gallipoli who would disagree.

  9. GreekEmpress says

    May 29, 2020 at 5:56 pm

    I’ll grant you Ataturk’s military abilities, and by the way, thank you for your army service, sir. Of course being Greek and Armenian my family views him as a butcher. His reconstruction and restructuring of the country was only intended for ethnic Turks; he had an active part in the Armenian/Greek/Assyrian genocide.

    • gravenimage says

      May 29, 2020 at 9:57 pm

      Grimly true, GreekEmpress.

      The Armenian Genocide–which targeted Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, and Levantine Christians–began under the Ottoman Empire, continued under the “Young Turks”, and continued further under Ataturk himself, including the horrific destruction of Smyrna. These Turks may have disagree with each other on many points, but all were good with slaughtering Christians.

    • keith O says

      May 30, 2020 at 9:27 am

      What can I say, but, thank you.

  10. gravenimage says

    May 29, 2020 at 9:38 pm

    Turkey: Muslim leaders rewriting history to glorify Ottoman Islamic rulers, downplay the secularist Ataturk
    ………………

    Well, of course. Turkey was half civilized under Ataturk who suppressed Islam–can’t have that!

    Erdogan want to reestablish the Caliphate, with himself as top dog.

  11. Bhaskar Mittal says

    May 30, 2020 at 11:06 am

    Turkish President should not be wearing western clothes. He should be wearing Arab dress and riding on Camel. Using Western invented tools, Aeroplanes, internet, TV, etc. is Haram.

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