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Turkish Reform Under Mustafa “Ataturk” Kemal: a Review on the Six Arrows of Kemalism

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Turkish Reform Under Mustafa “Ataturk” Kemal: a Review on the Six Arrows of Kemalism
Turkish Reform Under Mustafa “Ataturk” Kemal: A Review on the Six Arrows of Kemalism In the aftermath of World War I, the once great Ottoman Empire was left in shambles. After having lost almost all of the empire’s territory to European mandates in 1918, what little they had left became occupied by Allied troops. In order to return the Turkish people to their former glory, the Turkish War for Independence was fought, resulting in the creation of a new government in Ankara. By 1923, this government declared the end of the Ottoman Empire and proclaimed the name of the Turkish Republic. At the forefront of this new nation’s birth was Mustafa Kemal, a man who would come to be known as Ataturk, or “Father Turk” for his contributions to the establishment and reforms of this young state. But what exactly did this Ataturk do for the Republic of Turkey? In order to understand how much an influence Kemalist ideology had on the early days of the Turkish Republic, one must define the six basic principles behind it, known as the Six Arrows, learn how they were implemented in the early republic, and analyze the motives behind Kemal’s specific reforms. After doing thusly, one will discover that, had it not been for the influence of Kemalism, Turkey would never have existed in its modern form. The first of the Six Arrows is Republicanism. Republicanism can be defined as a form of government in which the people rule indirectly. Unlike the former Ottoman Empire, in which the primary ruler was the sultan who inherited his position through his genealogy, the Turkish Republic was conceived as a nation through which representatives from among the people would make decisions (86-88). In order to see this idea of Republicanism come to fruition, the long standing sultanate had to be dissolved. Though Kemal intended for this to be a reality since the early days of the War for Independence, he kept this agenda a secret from the populace in order to keep morale and war support


Cited: Akşin, Sina. Turkey: From Empire to Revolutionary Republic. Washington Square, NY: New York UP, 2007. Davison, Andrew. Secularism and Revivalism in Turkey: A Hermeneutic Reconsideration. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998. Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü. Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2011. Mango, Andrew. Atatürk. Woodstock, NY: Overlook, 2002. Parla, Taha, and Andrew Davison. Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or Order? Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 2004. Reisman, Arnold. Turkey 's Modernization: Refugees from Nazism and Atatürk 's Vision. Washington, DC: New Academia Publ., LLC, 2006. Volkan, Vamik D., and Norman Itzkowitz. The Immortal Atatürk: A Psychobiography. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1986.

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