Perry Anderson looks closely at Kemalism’s “brittle secularism”, noting the complicated picture prior to the (official) end of the Ottoman sultanate than is typically portrayed in the literature of certain Islamist groups.
But, as noted earlier, Kemalism was not the sharp break with the ‘past’ it attempted to be or is thought to be:
Though it broke, sharply and abruptly, with Ottoman culture in one fundamental respect by abolishing its script and so at a stroke cutting off new generations from all written connection with the past, in its distance from the masses Kemalism not only inherited an Ottoman tradition, but accentuated it.
Plus, Anderson notes:
Kemalism did not so much separate religion from the state as subordinate it to the state, creating ‘directorates’ that took over the ownership of all mosques, appointment of imams, administration of pious foundations – in effect, turning the faith into a branch of the bureaucracy.
The article also touches on Kemal, the man:
Towards the end, photographs of Kemal have something of the glazed look of a worn roué: a general incongruously reduced to a ravaged lounge lizard, terminal blankness nearby. Stricken with cirrhosis, he died in late 1938, at the age of 57.
thabet 2:16 am on September 7, 2008 Permalink |
Are you talking about the Armenian genocide?
From the LRB article above and form what I have read, no, he had no direct involvement.
But, as noted in Anderson’s review of Kemalism, he probably saw the removal of foreign elements as good thing in his bid to create a new Turkish identity:
Certainly, were he around today, he would be denounced as a repressive dictator rather than someone who introduced “progress” to the “Muslim world”.
thabet 12:07 am on September 8, 2008 Permalink |
If you see it from Iqbal’s point of view, he was writing in praise of a man who wanted to expel foreign invaders, and given the situation of most Muslims in that era, you can probably see why he praised Kemal. But I am pretty certain that Iqbal also lamented Kemalist crudity.