ATATURK vs ERDOGAN? And why?

[tornikef]

ATATURK

ERDOGAN

Neither

[nightdrot]

Not even a close call. Ataturk by a country mile.

Ataturk, for whatever his considerable sins and imperfections, sought to reorient his country to confront the upheavals of a century that was unkind to tradition and order. He attempted to ground his country in an identifiable nationalism - a sense of identity - but that was adapted to its' era. The sultanate was discredited and the caliphate not well suited to an oncoming secular era. Faith laying in the ruins of a lost world war, and therefore no longer sufficient as a socially unifying force.

By contrast, Mr. Erdogan brings, in terms of governing, all of Ataturk's sins but none of his assets. Mr. Erdogan being little more than a populist with no greater vision than to ground his people in a forlorn nostalgia and religious fundamentalism that will - as all fundamentalisms tend to do - crash on the rocks of modernity.

Thus Turkey gets from Mr. Erdogan the worst of all possible worlds. An autocrat - complete with the suppression including one of the worst records on press freedom in the world - who looks resolutely backward. Who plays to the Turkish public's - especially the rural public's - insecurities and sense of nostalgia for the tropes of a simpler time without offering any forward vision. Thus he divides society.

To be sure, Ataturk was no saint. His was hardly a cuddly and loveable democracy in the Western sense. This made worse by a certain bent toward social engineering. Using his people as guinea pigs in a grand social experiment.

However, Ataturk offered a sense of national identity and pointed it toward the future. He saw, however dimly, the shape of the century to come and he set his country on a course to prosper in it. This he largely accomplished, Turkey surviving the great ideological contests of the 20th century - World War II and the Cold War. The former as a careful neutral, the latter allied to the West in NATO and thus preserving Turkey from being reduced to a mere satellite of its historic enemy - the USSR as Russia was from 1917 to 1991.

Ataturk's project faltering into the populist resentments of Erdogan only as the end of ideological contest was replaced by an economic globalization that strained the gap between urban and rural populations. The former adapting to the economic environment, the latter - not without reason - rejecting the effect that environment was having on its traditional values and way of life.

It being arguable that were Ataturk alive today that he could have bridged that gap and not simply allowed the country to fall back into Mr. Erdogan's hopeless populism. The later the politics of envy and resentment, tarted up in a pious if paper thin religiosity. It to be regretted that Ataturk's later successors were not the equal of their times. Though then again that seems to be a phenomenon across large swathes of the Western world - see also the likes of Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden in the United States.

It is axiomatic that the clock can never be fully turned back. That the best leaders are those who strike the balance between their society's timeless principles and its' current circumstances. As the 18th century British statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke put it, "In that case, Prudence (in all things a Virtue, in Politicks the first of Virtues) will lead us rather to acquiesce in some qualified plan that does not come up to the full perfection of the abstract Idea, than to push for the more perfect, which cannot be attain'd without tearing to pieces the whole contexture of the commonwealth, and creating an heart-ache in a thousand worthy bosoms. In that case combining the means and end, the less perfect is the more desirable."

CONT.

[nightdrot]

This better describing, taking together the good and the bad and the circumstances each faced or faces, Ataturk as opposed to Erdogan. The latter offering fodder for seething social resentments and then jailing those whom regards as on the wrong side of the argument. Suffice to say that at his passing he is apt to leave a culture sullen with bitterness and set to draw blood.

[Anonymous]

Doesn't matter because we are forever Master of the Turks.

[tornikef]

But your grandparents didn't say that.

[Opinion Owner]

My grandfathers fought in ww2. My great grandfather marched through the streets of constantinople having conquered the Turks. There Turkish women threw themselves at him as Turkish been wept in the streets because they knew who was their masters.

[tornikef]

I guess you confuse a Turkish woman with a French woman. So what happened when you came to Istanbul? You ran back as you came. Aren't you all fucked up after the war of liberation? Ask your grandfather about Fatih Sultan Mehmet and Atatürk. You are the one who called Suleyman the Magnificent "the magnificent Süleyman". Although Suleyman was a mediocre sultan.

[Opinion Owner]

Not true. What happened was the Turks surrendered. Ataturk was a surrender monkey.

[Anonymous]

Erdogan is taking a beautiful country and making it more Arab and less western. He is ruining it.

[tornikef]

ATATURK?

[Opinion Owner]

Didn’t he contribute to the murder of all those Armenians? I don’t know much about him, I just know erdogan is a monster

[tornikef]

They were not killed, they were only forced to migrate and they deserved it. There were many Armenians who died during the migration, but this cannot be called genocide. In wartime this was necessary.

[Opinion Owner]

I mean the government made them leave without food, and only Armenians. Hundreds of thousands died, it’s a genocide for sure. That’s what the word genocide means.

[tornikef]

Armenians cooperated with the Russians and fought against the Ottoman Empire. It killed civilians. They had to be migrated. What would you do to people in your country who cooperate with the enemy and kill your family? I wish they hadn't died on the way but it happened. This is not genocide.

[Opinion Owner]

Murdering hundreds of thousands of women and children isn’t genocide? You are brainwashed.

[tornikef]

If there is an effect, it will react. Should they emigrate men and take women as booty? Yes, unfortunately, many Armenians died, but this migration was necessary under war conditions. Why was this done to Armenians, not Albanians, Bosnians, Georgian? Because they cooperate with the enemy and cause harm to civilians. do some empathy. Your country entered the World War and a nation was killing you by cooperating with your enemy, what would you do? In war conditions this was necessary.

Sorry girl, actually is that you are brainwashed. Where are you from?

[Opinion Owner]

Lol you are brainwashed. The holocaust was in time of war when the Nazis committed genocide against the Jews. The ottomans were at war and committed genocide against the Armenians. It doesn’t matter why, if you murder hundreds of thousands of women and children of a specific ethnic group, that’s a genocide. That’s what that English word means.

[tornikef]

There is no genocide, there is extortion. Bernard Lewis says that. Famous American historian. If the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians, the Armenians also committed genocide against the Turks before that. I expect the same sensitivity on this issue.

If you see the Jewish Genocide and the Armenian Genocide the same: you are either ignorant or brainwashed haha.

[Anonymous]

Ataturk never hot over the Shame of his surrender &defeat in ww1Turks still feel shame over the occupation by British forces who had their way with their great grandmother's while their great grandfather's watched powerless jerking off in the corner using their salty tears as lube knowing the British would forever be their masters

[Frontier-Man]

Ataturk, he was able to reverse the declining power of Turkey and set it back on its feet. Erdogan doesn't really seem to be doing a whole lot in comparison.

[NorthwestRider]

Ataturk duh

Erdogan is creepy religious nut who hates freedom