The New
York Times
NEW
YORK, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1938
ATATURK DIES AT 58; TURKS WILL ELECT A SUCCESSOR TODAY
National Assembly Expected to Name Gen. Inonu, Former Premier,
as President
NATION GOES IN MOURNING
Peaceful Transition to New Era Seen---Unity is Stressed Under
Ideal of Founder
Wireless to New York Times.
ISTANBUL, Turkey, Nov. 10- Kemal Ataturk, President
and creator of modern Turkey, died today at Dolma Baghche Palace at
the age of 58. He had survived thirteen wounds received in battle
and a number of assassination attempts, but succumbed to cirrhosis
of the liver.
It is expected that General Ismet Inonu, former Premier
and President Ataturk’s comrade-in-arms, will be chosen tomorrow morning
by the Republican People’s party to succeed the dictator-soldier,
hero of the reborn nation.
The bulletin announcing the death of Ataturk and
signed by eight doctors read:
“The President’s general condition, the gravity of which was announced
in a bulletin published last night, grew steadily worse. On Nov. 10,
1938, at 9:05 A.M., our great chief, in a deep coma, breathed his
last.”
Three minutes after his death Salih Bozuk, former aide and one of
the President’s closest friends, unsuccessfully attempted suicide
by shooting. He was seriously wounded.
Premier Stays at Bedside
Throughout the night Ali Fethi Okyar, Ambassador to London Ataturk’s
sister and his adopted daughter Sabihi Gueukschehn Honoum, the latter
a famous airwoman, remained near the bedside. The first indication
of the President’s death came at 11:30 A.M. when it was noticed that
the flags on government buildings were at half-staff. Soon the flags
of ships in the harbor were at half-mast, and gradually all shops
and houses exhibited similar signs of mourning.
Later, however, the authorities requested the withdrawal
of flags except those on government buildings. Although the flags
at half staff the appearance of so much color gave the impression
that Istanbul was on fete. All places of public entertainment were
closed and no intoxicants will be sold in Turkey until further notice.
The government’s communiqué issued this morning states:
“By Ataturk’s death Turkey has lost her great creator,
a nation its great Chief and humanity a great son. We offer our people
deepest condolences in their great loss. Our only consolation in our
affliction is our attachment to his great work and our service to
our dear country. We declare that before all things his immortal work
is the Turkish Republic.
“Your government is at its post at this grave time
through which we are passing. The great Turkish nation will, without
doubt, work as one body with the government to preserve order.
“In accordance with the Consti- (continued on page
eighteen) tution Abdullah Haik Renda, president of the Kamutay [National
Assembly] has assumed the interim Presidency of the republic and the
Kamutay will proceed forthwith with the election of a new President
of the republic. The government, the glorious Turkish Army with all
its might and the whole people, which form an unshakable entity, will
gather around whoever is elected to fulfill the highest office in
Turkey and to maintain her greatness.
“Ataturk, whom we mourn today and always, had the
confidence of the Turkish people. The continuation of his work he
bequeathed to the Turkish nation. The Turkish people, which is eternal,
will make it live eternally. Turkish youth will always defend the
Turkish republic, its precious legacy, and will march alone the path
Ataturk traced. Kemal Ataturk will live always.”
Beside General Inonu, Marshal Fevzi Cakmak, Chief
of Staff, and Mr. Okyar also are in the running for the Presidency.
The Marshal, as Chief of Staff, holds a position
of great authority in the new Turkey and he is universally respected
as the father of the army. However, he is essentially a soldier and
he is known to be reluctant to play a political role. It is said that
before President Ataturk became seriously ill he asked the Marshal
whether he would stand for the Presidency if Ataturk resigned. The
suggestion was declined.
Mr. Okyar, once Prime Minister of Turkey and lately
Ambassador to London and an experienced diplomat, has been Ataturk’s
most intimate friend. Since the suppression in 1930 of the short-lived
Liberal party, of which he was a leader, he never joined the Republican
People’s party and it seems unlikely that the Kamutay, composed almost
entirely of adherents of the party the principals of which were lately
embodied in the Constitution, would elect a non-party man President.
Moreover, neither Marshal Chakmak nor Mr. Okyar is
a member of the Kamutay, from which a president is elected.
Inonu Is Likely Choice
Its seems, therefore, that the choice will fall on General Inonu.
For many years he was a close collaborator and lieutenant of President
Ataturk and until twelve months ago he had been Prime Minister continuously
for twelve years. No man in Turkey possesses his experience, and that
is perhaps more important than his popularity, which for long has
been second only to Ataturk’s. Much has been said about their estrangement
last year when General Inonu resigned the Premiership, but in light
of subsequent events it now seems clear that it was the result chiefly
of temporary mutual irritation. President Ataturk was a sick man and
General Inonu was suffering from the strain of the long, arduous years
in office.
Ever since it was agreed between them that in the
interest of the country the partnership should be dissolved, the general
deliberately kept in the background, but the Turkish people, with
the possible exception of a few private enemies, continued to regard
him as the natural successor to his former chief.
Even if none of three is elected to the Presidency
and the Kamutay decides to choose another who has not played a prominent
part in the life of the republic, the loyal cooperation that is now
manifesting itself between Marshal Chakmak, Mr. Okyar and General
Inonu, toward Jelal Bayar, the present Prime Minister, should be sufficient
to guarantee a peaceful transition to the new era.
Change in Policy Unlikely
ISTANBUL, Nov. 10 (AP). – There were unconfirmed reports today that
Kemal Ataturk had left a political testament to guide his successor
in his own rigid doctrine of westernization and nationalism.
No one expected Turkey’s new leadership to turn in
the immediate future from the domestic and foreign balance that Ataturk
achieved for his nation, strategically situated between the East and
the West.
Before Ataturk became gravely ill in mid-October
he was borrowing money for Turkey with little discrimination from
both Britain and Germany, although his early struggle for power was
tinged with bitter hatred for the influence of both.
The British and German Foreign Offices were known
to have keen interest in his successor and the future course of Turkey.
KEMAL ATATURK
Ataturk, a Military Hero, Formed surging Nation
He was called simply Mustafa when he was born in Salonika
in 1880, the son of a Turkish custom’s officer. His mathematic’s teacher
at military preparatory school added Kemal, meaning “rightness,” to
his name.
When he fought his way to leadership of the Turks,
the title of Pasha was added. Most of his historic record was made as
Mustafa Kemal Pasha.
In 1934, when he had so modernized Turkey that titles
were abolished and he was able to decree that all Turks must thereafter
have family names, he chose for himself the family name of Ataturk,
which is translated as “Chief Turk” or “Father of All Turks.” Thenceforth
he was known as Kemal Ataturk.
His death comes as a blow to a nation of 14,000,000
people, although he reformed their social customs, their religion and
their economics with dictatorial zeal and speed.
Out of the remains of the defeated and dismembered
Ottoman Empire, he formed in 1923 a republic, which he armed and industrialized
and made into a powerful nation. He repossessed the Dardanelles in 1936,
conciliated the Greeks and steered a course between East and West in
a manner that made Soviet Russia, Britain and Germany in turn glad to
cultivate Turkey’s friendship and lend her millions of further development.
Women Admitted to Parliament
In twelve years of reform women in Turkey were transported from the
harem and the veil to membership in Parliament, to which seventeen women
were admitted in 1935. President Ataturk even gave women the right to
serve in the army, but said they would never be sent to the front because
they were too precious to the nation.
In another phase of reform, he stripped Mohammedan
priests of their privileges and made Sunday instead of Friday the day
of rest to conform with western usage. He devoted himself to the development
of an army and navy with which to assure the Turkish position in dealing
with the Western powers. By this year he had a modernized army of almost
500,000 men and was spending $70,000,000 of Turkey’s annual budget of
$210,000,000 to expand the national defense . He announced a five-year
plan intended to bring Turkey’s air force up to 1,000 of the latest
military planes. He ordered twenty-five submarines and planned to equip
Turkey to manufacture arms and war materials within
her own boundaries.
Turkey’s control of the Dardanelles had already made
her one of the most important powers in the Mediterranean, and she was
prepared to defend her position instead of being a pawn of stronger
European nations as in the past.
Straits Pact Repudiated
She had gained this position finally when Ataturk decided that Turkey’s
new national stature justified the repudiation of the last remaining
restriction on her sovereignty---the Straits convention of 1923, which
forbade her to fortify the Dardanelles.
The President declared his belief and assembled his
troops. The powers interested in the Straits convention said it was
a “grave move,” but a hurriedly summoned conference in 1936 at Montreux,
Switzerland, gave Turkey the Straits once more.
Ataturk was instrumental in the formation of the Balkan
Entente, with Turkey, Greece, Romania and Yugoslavia, and thereafter
in 1937 he formed the Moslem, or Middle-East bloc, with Turkey, Iraq,
Iran and Afghanistan.
Early in 1937 Ataturk grew impatient with long-drawn-out
negotiations with France over the Syrian mandate, which France was about
to relinquish by recognizing Syria as a republic. The Turks wanted Alexandretta,
containing Antioch and an important corner of the Eastern Mediterranian
shore leading to the Mosul oil fields.
The Turks had their way. Alexandretta was made an autonomous
State last July, under Franco-Turkish administration and defense forces,
with the understanding that the French would eventually withdraw, leaving
it to the Turks.
Policy Based on Expediency
The course of Turkey’s international relations was steered by Ataturk
on an apparent chart of expediency, based on the position that Turkey
occupies as a strong power astride the Dardanelles, separating Russia
from the Mediterranian, facing Germany on the historic route to Baghdad
and balancing Italy’s growth along Britain’s “life-line” to the East.
Russia was the first to help Turkey to power. In the
post-war settlement the Soviet opposed in vain the partition of Turkey.
And when Kemal, not yet Ataturk, later undertook to drive out the Allies
Russia supplied arms, materials and funds that contributed greatly to
the final crushing of the Greeks in 1922.
The Soviet thereafter enjoyed a position of preferred
friendship in Turkey, but this cooled about ten years later when it
became evident that the Turkish dictator was willing to have other friends
also.
Britain and France were eager to oblige the Turks. Last July, when Russia
held aloof, Britain lent Turkey $80,000,000, mostly for arms.
Germany, meanwhile, was courting Turkey. So was Italy,
Ataturk could not readily forget, however, that the downfall of the
Ottoman empire had resulted from siding with Germany in the World War
and that Turkey had been among the Entente powers that Italy had deserted
to side with the Allies.
Germany came bearing gifts, however. She offered a
commercial treaty. And she offered a huge credits under which she would
undertake to construct docks for Turkey along the Bosporus, deliver
a fleet of coastwise steamers and build a variety of factories. Ataturk
announced a five-year plan of industrialization.
Moreover, as the Czechoslovak crisis developed he suffered
disillusionment in his belief that Britain was the strongest power in
the world. Turkey concluded a commercial treaty with Germany, accepted
a loan of 150,000,000 marks and proceeded to become Germany’s greatest
foreign market. She is currently buying goods and services from Germany
at a yearly rate of about $130,000,000, while selling to Germany at
a yearly rate of $80,000,000.
It became evident to the world that Ataturk had brought
Turkey to the receiving end of several competing international axes
and to the profit position in the adjoining nationality blocs.
Scorned Doctors’ Advice
During a quarter of a century of war, intrigue and the dictation of
sweeping reforms, however, Ataturk had habitually disregarded all doctors’
orders to take better care of his powerful physique.
Although he was stern and strict in his official life,
he was known to be convivial and carefree in his social life. He frequently
danced and drank all night, or played poker (with great success) all
night, smoking incessantly the while. Then he slept twenty-four hours
without interruption.
A French liver specialist ordered a complete rest for
him early this year, but he disdained it. His people heard of this and
raised such a clamor that Turkey bought him a luxurious yacht from Richard
M. Cadwaladen an American. It had gold-plated bathroom fitting and gold
door knobs. On it he caught a chill last summer while entertaining King
Carol of Rumania. He never completely recovered.
Almost to the day of death Ataturk struggled to disestablish
the ancient methods of Turkish thought. When the medical profession
of Turkey, which he had reorganized on modern scientific lines, wished
to express appreciation of what he had done for public health, the best
medical thought decided to present a solid gold bath-tub, eight feet
long, five feet wide and four feet deep.
The best Turkish doctors thought it was the only thing
fitted for the Ghazi—the Conqueror. Ataturk ordered it melted down and
the proceeds expended on bettering the public health.
Had a Food Taster
Yet Ataturk could not escape being a traditional Turk in one respect;
he had an official food taster. He was served by Mohammed Mouhi, who
was paid $15,000 a year for about twenty minutes’ work a day.
Mohamme d’s duty was to taste well of all food and
drink intended for Ataturk. Thereafter the meal was kept in a hot table
for an hour. If Mohammed did not die by that time the dictator ate and
drank.
Ataturk presided over a republic about as large as
California and New Mexico combined. Although he rose to power because
of his military ability, a career for which his early education destined
him, his post-war activities were those of a progressive and energetic
administrator.
Emil Ludwig, the German biographer once called him
“a man compared with whom Napoleon was half a dreamer.” An outstanding
fact about the dictator’s extraordinary career was his consistency and
his patience, his courage and his silence. It was he who won the peace
of Lausanne--the first time for 200 years that old
Asia achieved a victory over Europe.
He was a revolutionary officer who in his Salonika days had began to
oppose the committee of Young Turks; a man for whom no measure of reform
was adequate, who found the policy of Talaat and Enver superficial,
and the alliance with Germany fatal; the man who made no capital out
of the military reputation he earned at Gallipoli, who twice withdraw
from public life, who with threats warned the last Sultan to turn over
a new leaf, and who after the war, contrived to defeat him and the people
in power in Constantinople, and who was warned, recalled, deposed and
sentenced to death by the then Turkish Government.
Having in his command 20,000 war-worn soldiers, he
entered upon the conflict with the great powers of Europe, and then,
for four whole years, surrounded by foes without and within, waited
until he had overthrown the Sultan, abolished the Caliphate, set free
the essential part of Turkey from the ruins of the old empire, saved
it and reestablished it as a republic. By these achievements he proved
himself a great military leader and statesman.
The President’s moustache and fez, prominent features
in his portraits at the time when he rose to power, were given up after
he had established himself. His medium sized, slight figure was clad
in elegant civil dress. His hair was bright and blond. His furrowed
countenance indicated what he had gone through. He lived, as the first
citizen of his country, in a villa situated among the hills outside
the new capital that he had founded. He had built it in that Turkish
style that dates from the period when French tastes prevailed. Almost
unguarded its doors were left open in true Oriental fashion.
Dates in His Career
The historical dates of the Ghazi’s career after the World War are:
On May 16, 1919, the Greeks landed at Smyrna. On June 21 the future
dictator called the assembly of a congress of patriots. The Sultan dismissed
him from the army service on July 8th. Two weeks later the Ghazi presided
at the Congress of Erzerum, which resolved that “with one accord the
entire East will resist the occupation and the interference of the foreigner.”
On Sept. 4 he was elected chairman of a second congress
at Sivas, which resolved “to fight for Turkish integrity.” In October
national elections were forced by him, and these resulted in the defeat
of the Sultan’s government. British troops, in March, 1920, took possession
of Constantinople, now Istanbul, and in April he was outlawed and condemned
to death by the Sultan.
Shortly afterward the Turkish National Assembly met,
elected the Ghazi President and adopted the national pact, the Magna
Charta of New Turkey. In May the Sultan sent a “Caliph’s army” toward
Angora to destroy the nationalist forces. This army was driven back
into Constantinople by the Ghazi.
When the Greeks began their invasion of Asiatic Turkey
in June, 1920, he organized an army of defense. On Aug. 10 the Treaty
of Sevres partitioned the Ottoman Empire and divided it among the European
powers.
The Ghazi stopped the Greek army at Sakaria on Sept. 13, 1921. At the
battle of Dumla Puvar, on Aug. 26 1922, he issued an order to his troops,
“Soldiers, your goal is the Mediterranian! On to it!” A few days later
he drove the Greek army into the sea. He advanced upon Constantinople
and the Dardanelles, and on Oct. 11, 1922, authorized the signing of
the armistice treaty with the Allies at Mudovia, which, in effect, was
an other diplomatic victory for Turkey.
On Nov.1, 1922, the Ghazi abolished the Sultanate,
and on Nov. 17 the Sultan fled from Turkey on a British warship. Three
days later the peace conference opened at Lausanne. Ably represented
and supported by his brilliant colleague Ismet Pasha, the Ghazi won
his great diplomatic victory and on Oct.29, 1923, was elected first
President of the Turkish Republic.
Ataturk was born when Abdul Hamid II was Sultan. He
was an only son and he was intended by his mother for the mosque school,
but he became fascinated by the uniforms of the army officers and was
sent to the military preparatory school at Salonika.
Plotted Against Sultan
After attending the military preparatory school at Salonika, the officers’
school at Monastir and the War Academy at Constantinople, Kemal, then
a head strong youth of 22, entered the army in 1902 with the rank of
lieutenant. Through forbidden literature he became acquainted with Western
ideas of government, which soon led to his hatred of Abdul Hamid, whom
he bitterly opposed. In a small apartment in the Stamboul section of
Constantinople he founded the secret Society of Liberty. As a result
he was arrested and after three months’ confinement in a cell at the
ministry of police, was exiled, being sent to Damascus to join a cavalry
regiment. There he founded local branches of his society, but, being
too isolated, fled to Alexandria and finally reached Salonika by way
of Piraeus in Greece.
When his secret activities were again discovered, he
flew to Akaba and stayed for a while in Syria. He obtained a transfer
to the Third Army’s staff at Salonika, merged the Society of Liberty
into the Society of Progress and entrenched his forces in Salonika,
Monastir and Uskup. The revolution of the Young Turks in 1908 failed,
but the Sultan lost his absolute regime in the counter-revolution of
1909. A quarrel between Kemal and Enver Pasha, whose rule succeeded
that of Abdul Hamid, followed, and Kemal withdrew from politics in bitter
disillusionment.
During the following years he led the life of the average
Turkish army officer. He was exiled by Enver to Tripoli, returned to
Salonika, was transferred to Albania, and again sent to Salonika. Hated
by Enver, he was military attaché at Sofia, Bulgaria, when Turkey joined
Germany in 1914 in a last desperate gamble for the life of the empire.
Kemal, convinced from the first that the empire was in no condition
to enter the war, received command of the Nineteenth Division and was
dispatched to the Dardanelles. He soon commanded all the Turco-German
forces on the peninsula, and his success in throwing back the British
before Anaforta was the most brilliant achievement of his military career.
This victory made him a great hero in Germany, but
it was not until its story was told in the Committee Year Book for 1917
that Enver permitted it to leak out in Constantinople. Two years later
the Turkish papers began printing the story of Anaforta, and Enver caused
the entire issues to be confiscated. By that time it had become politically
dangerous to mention Kemal’s name in the capital.
Alarmed at Kemal’s popularity, Liman von Sanders, the
German generalissimo, transferred him to the Russian front after the
British had evacuated the Dardanelles. He was appointed major general,
in command of the Sixteenth Army, but he came into conflict with Falkenhayn,
threw up his command in protest, and returned to Aleppo, where he dispatched
to Enver a remarkable statement, outlining the entire political situation
at a moment when a German victory was expected. Pointing out Falkenhayn’s
position, he warned: “We shall lose our own country and Falkenhayn will
sacrifice every ounce of gold and every soldier he can squeeze out of
us.”
Exiled to Germany
Enver’ reply to this warning was to give Falkenhayn command of the Palestine
front and to exile Kemal to Germany. For the next year he was on the
German and Austro-Hungarian front. Then Enver recalled him and gave
him the Yilderim command (Fourth, Seventh and Eighth Armies) on the
Palestine front. But it was too late. Kemal reached his post just as
Allenby’s great break-through brought the empire crashing down to its
end.
It was figuratively the end of the world for Kemal.
He returned to Constantinople, which had fallen into disorder. The members
of his revolutionary committee had fled, and Damad Ferid Pasha was to
succeed Talaat and Enver. Turkey was virtually surrounded by her enemies,
the Allies forming an iron ring around the remnants of the old empire.
Under the terms of the Mudros armistice, the Turkish Navy was interned
at Constantinople and the army disarmed. With the Allies in occupation
of the capital, Kemal knew that further attempts were useless. He fled
to Asia Minor. When he ignored Ferid’s demand to return, the latter
dismissed him from the army.
In the following struggle between Kemal and Ferid,
Kemal was the final victor. The Anglo-Hellenic rapprochement sent whole
provinces in Asia Minor scurrying to Kemal, with the result that this
part was lost to Ferid. With the Greek occupation of Smyrna in 1919,
which led Kemal to tear up Mudros armistice, the star of the Ghazi began
to rise, and,after his strategic victories, reached its climax with
his diplomatic victory at Lausanne and his election as first President
of the Turkish Republic.
Kemal Ataturk, the “most terrible of all the terrible
Turks,” as he was termed by Earl Balfour, who described him as a brigand,
was always a man who insisted on having his own ideas accepted.
The new Turkey got rid of her Sultans in 1922 but she
did not then dare abolish the Caliphate. The abolition of the Caliphate
was the first step of importance in the life of the new republic. The
next was the reform of the laws. This was achieved in the space of only
a few weeks. The Swiss Civil Code was almost literally translated, and
the best points of the Italian Penal Code were accepted. Thus the Ghazi,
by imposing his will upon the nation, had altered within three months
the entire judiciary.
He ordered the first census ever to be held on Turkish
territory. Although this was not a reform in itself, it led to reforms
of vast importance which gave the country and the world a definite idea
of Turkey’s importance in Near Eastern affairs. The President also made
the Turkish language obligatory as the official language, and ordered
that it be written in Roman instead of Arabic characters. Capitulations
(foreign privileges) were abolished. The Gregorian calendar was substituted
for the Islamic, and the feast of the Ramazan was fixed by astronomical
observation. In every direction Islamic precedence and prohibitions
were broken and violated.
Changed the Old Order
In its special aspects the revolution attempted to model the customs
of the State upon Western fashions. The old order was changed. The traditional
fez was abandoned and the Turkish women gave up their veils. Harems,
survival of Byzantium, were forbidden, monogamy became the law and men
and women received equal rights in the matter of divorce. In 1923 Angora,
in the heart of Anatolia, became officially the capital, as a result
of a decree by the President. He spent money freely to build it and
developed a modern city.
He started with Angora as an unkempt little Anatolian
village with narrow streets and mud-brick houses, where the only big
event was a weekly market for the peasants.
According to a German architectural plan by Herman
Jansen, the new capital was laid out in detached sections over an immense
site. From a central citadel, broad paved avenues radiated, imperiously
breaking the natural lines of a hilly plain.
These avenues were lined with handsome edifices in
broad arches and tiles—schools, lyceums, hospitals, dwellings, factories,
laboratories. Automobile traffic moves swiftly in Angora, where camel
caravans used to plod within the memory of many of the inhabitants.
The streets are lighted by electricity. A telephone exchange and a powerful
wireless station were in operation in Angora by 1925.
A typical act in the Ghazi’s endeavor to reform the
country was the changing of the name of Constantinople to the old Turkish
title Istanbul. This removed a historic reminder of the days when Occidentals
ruled on the Bosporus. It served also to bolster Turkish nationalistic
feeling.
After the Ottoman dynasty, which for six centuries
had been in power in the empire, had became mere history, Article II
of the constitution of the Turkish Republic declared that “The religion
of the Turkish State is Islam.” This article had to be removed as the
final step in Ataturk’s endeavor to separate the church from the State.
In 1928 the National Assembly struck out the article and provided that
government servants should no longer swear by Allah in taking the oath
of office, but should simply swear on their honor. Finally, an official
translation of the Koran was made.
The President married in January in 1923, Latife Hanim,
daughter of a wealthy Turkish merchant of Smyrna. It was reported that
his bride brought him a dowry of 1,000,000Turkish lire. The Ghazi divorced
his wife in 1925 by the simple old procedure of saying in the presence
of witnesses, “I divorce you.” |
