Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Sir Percy Loraine's Address on Ataturk 10 November 1948
(Sir Percy Loraine was the British Ambassador to Turkey from 1934 to 1939. This
address was given as a tribute to Ataturk by Sir Percy and broadcast on the BBC
on 10 November 1948, the tenth anniversary of Ataturk's death.)
Ten years have gone by since the death of Kemal Ataturk, ten years filled with
strife and controversy, with dreams of better things for man kind, with fears
lest even worse things befall; years which have changed the life of well- nigh
every man, woman, and child who has survived them. The passage of these years
has not dimmed the memory I have of Ataturk.
What did he look like? Well. An erect, manly figure, of unmistakable dignity,
impeccably dressed; clear-cut features, penetrating ice-blue ice, bristling
eyebrows, some harsh lines on his face, usually a grave and rather a stern
countenance; intense vitality showed in every glance, in every gesture and even
in immobility. His mind and his body seemed like springs coiled ready for
action. It was characteristics of the man that never, after he became President
did he again don his military uniform - glorious as it was. Not even to take the
salute at a parade and march past of troops - then always plain and faultless
evening dress with a silk hat; one decoration only - the gold medal of the war
of liberation.
I think he was a very remarkable man; I am certain he was a very unusual man. He
appeared quite simply not to know what it felt like to be afraid of danger, or
to be hesitant in the presence of difficulties. Some instinctive process - I
cannot find a name for it, for I have not met it in any other man - enabled him
to separate, at once and with no apparent effort, the essential from the
inessential in any problem or situation that came to his notice. His own
responsibilities are heavy: he accepted them wholly: he never shirked them: he
never feared them: he never shuffled them on to anyone else: and earn his
respect you yourself had to have a high sense of responsibility.
He loved argument and discussion. It was one of his way of examining other men;
not only their minds, also their character. His judgement was rarely at fault,
and rarely lenient. His integrity was absolute, his vision clear, his influence
galvanising. He must have been gifted by nature with immense will-power: I think
however he had harnessed it by a perfectly conscious exercise of self-disciple.
He knew very well that life is a long, stern and continuous examination. He
never stopped schooling himself to answer the question.
His favourite method of conversation was to set examinations, psychological as
well as intellectual, not only to his immediate circle, including the members of
his Cabinet but also to others with whom he wished to converse. They were
searching examinations. One could feel him scrutinising the reactions of his
interlocutor just as close as the answers given. Sometimes it was a drumfire of
questions: at others a long statement of his own views: then an interrogative
pause, marked by a piercing look from those ice-blue eyes from beneath
contracted eyebrows. One came to be able to translate that look. It meant: don't
shilly- shally: we speak as man to man. You are right: you are on the mat a bit;
but I detest yes-men and I want to hear what you think. Maybe you've got
something. Let's get at it.
Now - what did this man do? What did he achieve? That is, outside and after his
brilliant military career.
He fashioned and founded a new body politic out of the ashes, and mentality, of
despotism.
When all seemed lost in disastrous war - a humiliating experience for a people
with a proud heritage of military tradition - his faith in the Turkish folk
never faltered: he restored their faith themselves; he liberated their minds; he
released their energies; he buried an outworn past; he threw open the doors of a
future; and he kept faith with his people.
Ataturk has been classed as a dictator. In my opinion this view of him is
mistaken and misleading. Admittedly we have no authoritative definition of the
"dictator" in modern times, though no one, I fancy, would demur to its
application to Hitler and Mussolini. Then why, you may ask, does not Ataturk not
belong to the same category.
There are number of reasons. The main one was that he was consciously building
for his own absence, trying to create a system of government and administration
that would survive him; trying to teach his doctrines and to explain his ideals
rather than to enforce conformity with his views. In the scheme of things he had
worked out during the war of liberation with his principle collaborators in the
Kemalist movement, the sovereignty of the nation was vested in the Grand
National Assembly whose members were elected by the people, with which rested
the four-yearly election of the President of the Republic and in which the
Sovereignty of the State was vested.
Revolutions can never be kid-glove affairs and, in the early days, before the
new Constitution and its organs could get into their stride, Ataturk had no
doubt on a number of occasions to take decisive action on his own initiative. He
was nevertheless at pains to act through legal forms. His deference towards the
GNA was marked. His main care, so far as internal affairs were concerned, was to
create a living political organism that would not only function then, but have
in it the necessary flexibility to adapt and develop itself as circumstances
might demand. So far from giving orders, as is popularly supposed to all and
sundry, he was constantly holding Ministers to the discharge of their
responsibilities. Had he lived, I think he would quite likely have stood down
from the next Presidential election and retired into private life, just to see
whether the machine could run itself competently without him. Whether his
advisers and friends would have allowed him to do so, it is not possible to
guess. His whole attitude was that he, as President, was the Head of the State,
and that the Government, whose responsibility to the Sovereign Grand National
Assembly needed the consecration of a continuous practice of the Constitution,
was charged with the administration of the country.
Ataturk realised that in the early days of the Republic the people and the time
were not ripe for what we know as popular Government. The public was steeped in
the traditions of the Sultanate and the Empire, and the era of the Committee of
Union and Progress had not changed very much in that respect: therefore the
public as well as Ministers had to be educated to the new responsibilities which
the new Constitution imposed on them. Meanwhile, things had to be kept steady,
and the needs of Turkey as a modern, progressive State had to be studied, and so
far as was possible, with the resources available, provided for. Above all, a
visible system of national economy must be created; as early as 1923 Ataturk
boldly told the nation that unless that could be done in ten years, all the
struggles and sacrifices of the war of liberation would prove to have been in
vain.
His foresight was so shrewd and accurate, almost uncannily so, his sense of the
march of events, of popular feeling, of the needs of Turkey's external relations
was so often proved right, that his collaborators habitually consulted him about
their course of action in circumstances that to them were difficult and obscure.
His help was always available to them, but the way of counsel, not of order.
And what was there in foreign policy of Ataturk that smelt of the dictator?
Nothing. It was a policy of peace, friendship, reconciliation and guarantee
against war, so long as the neighbours were willing to respect the integrity and
independence of the New Republic and its territories.
The hatchets with Russia were buried; the quarrel with Greece was ended and
replaced by close relations; the Balkan feuds were extinguished by the Balkan
Entente Treaty; Bulgaria alone abstaining from participation. The non-
aggressive Pact of Saadabat with Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan was a guarantee of
peace on the Eastern border. Relations with France, good and friendly. With
Fascist Italy, correct, but no so good. With Britain, not only complete
reconciliation, also the growth of the closest and most cordial relations, that
so happily subsist today.
Lastly, as regard her own frontiers, the policy of the Kemalist Republic was, in
name and fact, non-revisionist.
Has anything in common with a "Dictator" policy? Surely the answer
must be emphatic "No".
The conclusion is that the work of Kemal Ataturk has stood the test of time - a
test which since 1939 could hardly have been stood - and still stands it. Not
only is Turkey stable in herself; she is also a stable factor in a distressed
and uncertain world. She knows her mind, she knows her friends; she steadfastly
pursues her course; she keeps her engagements.
Turkey is fortunate to have had Ataturk: she is fortunate to have Ismet Inonu;
she is fortunate to be inhabited by a great people; industrious,
self-disciplined, endowed with plenty of good sense, who seek freedom for
themselves and deny it to no other man. The plan I made for this talk was to
give listeners a picture of a man, and an outline of his work as a Founder of
the Republic. It may seem to err on the impersonal side. If it does, I have a
valid reason for handling my subject in that way. It is that an Ambassasor's
relations with the Head of the State to whom he is accredited are necessarily of
a formal character. Especially so in the case of Ataturk, because he never gave
an audience to diplomatic Envoys except on purely formal occasions, he never
received them privately, nor did he entertain them in his residence. It was one
rule for all, and he was wise enough to make no exceptions; he knew very well
what jealousies and heart- burnings any such exceptions were likely to cause.
Furthermore, he let it be clearly understood that diplomatic representations
could not be addressed to him, but should be addressed to the Minister of
Foreign Affairs. The ground for this unequivocal attitude are not far to seek,
and are perfectly correct. His duties as President, towards outside world, were
not executive, they were representative. The Government were the Executive, and
it was their business to acquaint him with negotiations and conversations with
diplomatic Envoys.
Nevertheless, on a formal occasion, such as the presentation of Letters of
Credence, or the announcement by me the Accession of the King, after a formal
part of the audience was over, during which he and I remain standing, he would
ask me to sit down and have a talk, at which the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
already there in duty, would remain in present. Such occasions were obviously
rare; even so, I found them most interesting and always helpful. They had to be
rather ceremonious, but they did supply an occasional personal contact, and an
opportunity for each of us to size the other up. I have no doubt that my foreign
colleagues had similar opportunities. Usually he spoke in Turkish - my
acquaintance which is very elementary - and the Minister translated; every now
and then he used French, a language in which he was not very fluent, but
nevertheless able to make his meaning clear.
His one reception of the year was in the evening of the national feteday,
October 29th, in a public building. In the morning he had already received, in
the Grand National Assembly and Mission by Mission, the diplomatic
representatives, accompanied by the members of their staff, all in full uniform,
to receive their congratulations and those of their Governments. In the evening
it was a huge reception, with lavish refreshments, to which were bidden
Ministers of State, Deputies, high Turkish officials and Officers, prominent
Turkish citizens and the Diplomatic Body. The latter were conducted to a
separate room and the President, after greeting each individual with the grave
dignity that became him so well, would sit down in the middle of an arc of
armchairs, and then instruct his aide-de- camp to invite now these, now those,
members of company to join his circle.
It was his evening; it habitually ran on till the small hours of the morning,
and he thoroughly enjoyed it. Even so, the examination system to which I alluded
earlier was never relaxed.
The last one was on October 29th, 1937, and that evening I must have sat next to
him for nearly five hours; it was a first-class opportunity for observing
Ataturk's fantastic power of concentration. He had something to say to, or to
learn from each newcomer to the circle; the talk never became light or chatty;
everything he said was leading somewhere, and one could sense the unflickering
purpose and the tireless spirit of enquiry that lay behind it. An inquest, if
you will; but not an inquisition. Upon my soul I do not know what kind of
biographer Kemal Ataturk, ought to have had: a Samuel Pepys or a Boswell? or
both, or neither?
I think, however, you will now understand why I cannot say what he liked for
breakfast, who his tailor was, or what toothpaste he preferred. I wouldn't know
and it really doesn't matter.
I am concerned with the man himself, and will say one last word about him. He
was not a convenient man - any thing but. He was harsh - his life had been cast
in harsh places - but he was just. He knew his own mind very clearly; but he
would always listen. He did not frequent societies: he made them. He demanded
loyalty, and he earned it. Power never went to his head. He was incapable of
meanness. The welfare of the Turkish people was his first concern. He saw it in
terms of war and conquest. Hard as he seemed, and unsentimental as he was, I
think he nevertheless felt a deep need to be surrounded by affection. Cool heads
do not always mean cold hearts.
More..............
Founder of
the Turkish Republic
Peace at
Home, Peace in the World
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