Talk:Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Time for the Presidency section?

Should we shorten/summarize that section now? 128.211.202.45 (talk) 03:10, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Presidency section is too long to have a single article. It is not possible to summarize "domestic policies" and "foreign policies" within 300-1000 words as a single Wikipedia:Lead section. This move will create problems which may be tagged with {{Sync}} without considering these issues. I would be the first to put tag POV "look at Avoidance of POV forks." If you create one page for "domestic policies" another for "foreign policies" you are breaking up many related issues. I will object that. Did you look at the section Wikipedia:Summary style. Your rush to "shorten/summarize" has its own problems. There was a Turkish editor who claimed will turn the article Istanbul into great article, He could not promote the article into "Good Article" status. There was another Turkish editor who wanted to integrate Ottoman military article into the Ottoman Empire article, instead of creating a summary section (you are trying to do the reverse). I wish you take a look at the Ottoman Empire and write a good summary for the military section (no sub headings - limited within the rules of the lead section). The Ottoman Empire article become over bloated and lost its Good Article status. It is filled with Military pictures, like ottomans had nothing else to present at the main page. When it comes to this article; Where is the assassination attempt? There are many issues not explained under foreign relations.

Why don't help us to write the missing sections, rather than cutting the article first. When all the topics are explained these issues can be handle with rearranging. It may be best to divide the article into "presidency first decade (1923-1933)" ("onuncu yil soylevine kadar") and later years "presidency late years (1934-1938)." This way related issues will be under the same page. I hope you are willing to take all these issues seriously, otherwise history will repeat itself. What happened to lead editor? --Rateslines (talk) 05:33, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Let's not discourage ourselves with such stuff. We will do as much as we can, and any improvement is an improvement. That said, I do not think I have the resources to undertake the job of a lead editor, even if I sign in to be able to edit this semi protected article. I do not see any good outcome of dividing his presidency the way you suggest (first decade and afterwards), which seems to be rather arbitrary, and it might suggest a change in Ataturk's attitude. I still have some recommendations about the presidency section. It took a good amount of time, I hope it will be helpful.

First two paragraphs

Mustafa Kemal capitalized on his reputation as an efficient military leader and spent the following years, up until his death in 1938, instituting wide-ranging and progressive political, economic, and social reforms, transforming Turkish society from perceiving itself as Muslim subjects of a vast Empire into citizens of a modern, democratic, and secular nation-state that was 'completely independent'. In his words: "…by complete independence, we mean of course complete economic, financial, juridical, military, cultural independence and freedom in all matters. Being deprived of independence in any of these is equivalent to the nation and country being deprived of all its independence."

Nature of the state:

In forging the new republic, the Turkish revolutionaries turned their back on the perceived corruption and decadence of cosmopolitan Istanbul and its Ottoman heritage. For instance, Ankara, then some provincial town in deep Anatolia turned into the center of the independence movement became later the capital. The revolutionaries regularly faced challenges from the supporters of the old Ottoman regime, and also from the supporters of relatively new ideologies such as communism and fascism. Mustafa Kemal saw the consequences of fascist and communist doctrines in the 1920s and 1930s and rejected both, preventing the spread of totalitarian party rule which held sway in the Soviet Union, Germany and Italy. Some perceived Atatürk's silencing of opposition to this as a means of eliminating competition, others believed it a necessary means to protect the young Turkish state from succumbing to the instability of new ideologies and competing factions.

Especially this next sentence needs to be fixed or otherwise changed, preferably by a native speaker: Atatürk's ideology, based on his conception of realism and pragmatism, encompassing the principles of Six Arrows has been the defining ideology of the Republic of Turkey.

Single-party state: First paragraph needs to go elsewhere, if you want to keep it

Mustafa Kemal's private journals show that, even before the establishment of the republic in 1923, he believed in the importance of the sovereignty of people as opposed to the sovereignty of the absolute monarch, which was the case in the Ottoman Empire. He wanted a "direct government by the Assembly" and visualized a parliamentary sovereignty (a representative democracy), where the National Parliament would be the ultimate source of power. In the following years, Kemal took the position that the country needed an immense amount of reconstruction, and "direct government by the Assembly" could not survive in this environment.

On September 9, 1923, Kemal founded the "People's Party", which was later renamed to Republican People's Party (Template:Lang-tr). Atatürk has been criticized arguing that he did not promote democracy by dominating the country with his single party rule. Andrew Mango wrote that: "between the two wars, democracy could not be sustained in many relatively richer and better-educated societies. Atatürk's enlightened authoritarianism left a reasonable space for free private lives. More could not have been expected in his lifetime." Atatürk has always supported the idea of eventually building a democratic state. In one of his many speeches about the importance of the democracy, Mustafa Kemal said in the year 1933: "Republic means democratic administration of the state. We founded the Republic, reaching its tenth year it should enforce all the requirements of democracy as the time comes."

Parliamentary opposition (Kadınlar Halk Fırkası, led by Nezihe Muhiddin, is the first one)

In 1925, Kazım Karabekir established the Progressive Republican Party (PRP) and the first multi-party system began. PRP's economic program suggested liberalism, in contrast to state socialism, and its social program was based on conservatism in contrast to modernism. Leaders of the party strongly supported the Kemalist revolution in principle, but had different opinions on the cultural revolution and the principle of secularism. PRP was dissolved following the Sheikh Said Rebellion.

In 1930, with the support of by Mustafa Kemal, Ali Fethi Okyar established the Liberal Republican Party. The party was quickly embraced by the conservatives who saw it as an opportunity to reverse the reforms of Atatürk, particularly regarding secularism. Seeing the rising fundamentalist threat and being a staunch supporter of Atatürk's reforms himself, Ali Fethi Okyar abolished his own party the same year.

Foreign policies first paragraph can stay the way it is. Mosul and Kurds should be made/moved into a new article.

Hatay:

In 1936 Kemal raised the "Issue of Hatay" at the League of Nations. On behalf of the League of Nations, representatives of France, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium and Turkey prepared a constitution for Hatay, which established it as an autonomous sanjak within Syria. Despite some inter-ethnic violence, in the midst of 1938 an election to the local legislative assembly was conducted and it was convoked. The cities of Antakya (Antioch) and İskenderun (Alexandretta) were regained by Turkey in 1939.

Let me stop here for now. My suggestions can be used as a starting point, up to you. Someone else may do the rest. 128.211.202.45 (talk) 07:30, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Some revisions to my recommendations and some more recom.

Nature of the state:

We should get rid of the subsection titles, they are not really necessary there and they just clutter the TOC

We should get rid of Ankara stuff; it's possibly misleading, not so necessary and it's breaking the flow

We might need to introduce the "balance of powers stuff"

"some perceived Ataturk's..." sentence needs sources. And who is 'some', do we know?

with the support of, not "of by".

General:

Words like "however" tend to be unnecessary and sentences with "however" tend to be original research. "Even though" is another one

We should decide which English we should use. It will be harder for me, but on this article, I believe we should use British English.

Economic policies section should be cropped a lot. I can't do much there

Literacy rates before the language reform in Turkey (1927). The literacy rates rose to 48.4% among males and 20.7% among females in 1950.

:we can remove the section title of section:modernization. And we can use he following image there:

When talking about the reforms, we should not forget that we have another article, Atatürk's Reforms.

128.211.202.45 (talk) 21:44, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Australian War Memorial - Gallipoli

I think that ataturks words (that are featured on the memorial) belong in a subsection of the section "Legacy"

Ataturk felt stongly about the gallipoli battle, his words can be accessed here [1] 203.122.240.118 (talk) 11:34, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Article is a series because of its size. There is a huge section about this issue. If you have time, please consider Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's military career. You can find everything you are looking for regarding this topic. --Rateslines (talk) 04:27, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Ratesline

Isn't it a problem that this user acts like the sole owner of the article by continously imposing his own preferences and by virtually fighting with any other editor who does not agree with him?--88.241.22.35 (talk) 07:58, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

If he did, please discuss here. The choice of images causes a lot of problems. That Time picture was one of the main reasons this article failed good article criteria, as far as I remember.Deniz^T_C 10:28, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Uch

Like every other personality, there should be a critics or a controversy section on this page. I tried to make one, with full citations, but someone deliberately deletes it. I think this is not how wikipeida should function. If turkey cannot provide freedom of speech in their own country, atleast let us do it online. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Uch (talk • contribs) 02:22, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Welcome but 1) your addition is original research. 2) the sourced parts are to secondary things, not to your assertions 3) we should not use blogs and other unreliable sources 4) we cannot have a criticism section for the sake of it, they should be embedded (and they are) to the relevant parts.

I am moving your text here Deniz^T_C 10:25, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

"Mustafa Kemal has had his share of critics. Many Allege that he was a 'traitor to Islam' because he abolished the Caliphate, which after the first World War was the head of the only surviving Muslim Empire, the Ottomans.

Mustafa Kemal has also been blamed for trying to preach Democracy, secularism and human rights like those in West, but did not act upon them. Examples include the Hat law of 1925 [2] where Turkish people were forced to wear western clothes and give up Traditional Turkish clothes. A move seen by many as a breach of Human rights, practiced as late as 2008, when woman were banned from covering their hair in a government building.

Another example was the changing of the Turkish language from the Arabic script to the Latin Script.

In His time , the Adhan i.e. Call to prayer was also changed from Arabic into Turkish.

All these moves have been seen by many as a deliberate attempt of forcing his own ideas, without any popular support. [3]

He has also been labeled by many as a dictator, [4] because during his life time, there was no proper functioning democracy, and only one political party, thus he was the Army General, and the first President without any elections ever held for this post."

Criticisms

Why is there no talk about the Armenian Genocide when allegedly he played such a key role in it? http://www.armenian-genocide.org/kemal.html Cozret (talk) 01:04, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Like a previous poster, I find this article strangely lacking in criticism - it reads as a hagiography. However great a leader Ataturk was, he surely must have had his critics, both during and after his life. So why is there almost nothing about this in the article?

Now, I know that criticism of Ataturk in Turkey is likely to get you jailed or worse, but Wikipedia is not subject to such constraints on freedom of speech. 79.78.126.201 (talk) 13:15, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

The unregistered user 79.78.126.201 states that "I know that criticism of Ataturk in Turkey is likely to get you jailed or worse". That's simply incorrect. Atatürk is criticized heavily in Turkey by, for instance, Islamists, radical liberals and certain communists. Moreover there is freedom of speech guaranteed by the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. There is a law stating that libel against Atatürk is punishable by jail sentences; however, libel and criticism are two different concepts. And the law in question was enacted in early 1950s when fundamentalists attacked Atatürk statutes in different location of the country. Writing down such comments is just irresponsible if not derogatory. Evren Güldoğan (talk) 13:21, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Maybe you should have a look at this.  --Lambiam 03:08, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

All content on Wikipedia must satisfy the criterion of verifiability. If you know of criticism reported on in a reliable source, it can (within reason) be mentioned in the article.  --Lambiam 03:03, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

You can easily criticize him by saying that he didn't transfer the country into a democracy and, regardless of what people say, it is a fact. Yes, he tried to form some parties for opposition and future democracy but these parties were closed down so easily. For my side, I don't care the existence of other parties because I know that if you try to form democracy that fast in a war-torned country, it would create "something else" than peace and liberty. The best example to this is NSDAP and their success in 1933. As I said, I support Mustafa Kemal for such a political decision but others don't have to do so. If you think you don't like this single-party thing because it had bad, negative etc. effects on Turkey, go on and add it to the article. Deliogul (talk) 17:05, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I am not a scholar of 1920s-30s Turkey, but someone who knows the era and Turkey needs to add a Criticisms section to this article. An article with this positive a viewpoint and no criticisms is silly. No historical figure gets off this lightly in an article of this nature. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.72.175.174 (talk) 05:12, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

i'm not Turkish so i dont know too much about Turkish laws but my understanding is that Turkish laws only forbid personal attacks on current government officials... (that's what they tried that writer for a few years ago)...

But i do agree that this article is substantially lacking in any kind of criticism. my guess is that someone is systematically removing anything that will harm ataturk's reputation. Philosophy.dude (talk) 23:47, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid your understanding of Turkish law is incomplete. You might peruse the external link I give above, as well as our articles Article 301 (Turkish penal code) and List of prosecuted Turkish writers. If "that writer" is Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, he did not issue any personal attack on current or past government officials, or on anybody else.

As to your guess, rather than ventilating such an undirected suspicion, you should take some time to examine the article history; if the suspicion is founded, it should not be hard to substantiate it.  --Lambiam 01:15, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Unsourced Bulk of text regarding the Misak-ı Millî and Mandates

Hi, regarding the bulk of text added by user user:90.192.126.127. The text needs to be discussed at the talk space before inclusion into the article. It looks like a copy-vio from another source. The incorporation of large text, without the cited references. The text includes very controversial arguments (I plainly claim they are wrong) regarding the issues already established in the wikipedia with sources, such as the claims voiced that Ataturk oppose the policies defined by Misak-ı Millî which was signed by the Ataturk himself. You should also look at the Mustafa_Kemal_Atatürk's_leadership_of_the_independence_war#The_mandates_and_National_Pact regarding mandates --Rateslines (talk) 15:23, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

POV

This article makes it look as though the Armenians, Greeks, Syrians were invaders of historic, and rightful, Turkish sovereign territory, and that Kemal was a liberator(even using the phrase "liberated" and likewise) from foreign invaders. Where is the mention of the Armenian Genocide, Assyrian Genocide, Pontic Greek Genocide and Ataturk's role in it? More should be added about how the Ottoman leaders gladly handed over historic territories to the subject peoples, only for Ataturk to murder the rightful owners of the land, en route to "liberating the partitioned Turkish republic". What about his role in the Burning of Smyrna, which he reduced to a punchline about drinking coffee? I have attempted to instill a more NPOV take, but was warned by someone for "disruptive edits". So apparently having a page read like an Ataturk fansite is NPOV, and something more evenhanded is "disruptive". 198.54.202.218 (talk) 14:35, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

You seem to be familiar with Wikipedia's policies, and would therefore understand that major changes or additions in content need to be accompanied by verifiable sources, otherwise such edits as those recently reverted read very much as violations of WP:NPOV. As well, the use of several accounts to make edits is against policies, per WP:SOCK. JNW (talk) 14:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, the current article is entirely POV. Likewise, I do not have "Several accounts". I am on a shared IP address/hub. Sometimes when I post/edit, it uses one IP< sometimes, another. I have no control over the matter. Other users also share these IPs with me. I made it clear however that I am one person. You have had to resort to making unfounded "Sock" accusations as you know the article is POV. 196.25.255.218 (talk) 14:44, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

No such accusation was made--this was a well-founded observation, which you have helped to clarify. The interpretation of sockness was, and is, quite understandable. As for the article's content: Actually, I do not know that the article is POV. What I have observed are edits which choose antonyms for the current adjectives [5], thereby changing the article's meaning without providing sources. That is a breach of NPOV, and would appear to be vandalism. JNW (talk) 15:08, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

"The article's meaning" as it stands now is clearly POV. Contentious words include "liberated" "partition" etc. 198.54.202.218 (talk) 15:40, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Furthermore, do you have verifiable sources for the statements and claims that I attempted to remove? 198.54.202.218 (talk) 15:49, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

If it is indeed one-sided, then the door is always open for scholarly reappraisal. I found this: [6], which is a meager start, but most of the websites commenting on Ataturk's culpability appear to be strongly biased for or against. Is there published material that passes the NPOV test? Please note that my involvement is, as much as possible, without political leanings; revisions in the quest for accuracy are a must, but deletions of content and addition of new material must be credibly sourced. JNW (talk) 15:52, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I have no interest in preserving a POV article. If there is legitimate scholarship that changes the tone and information, let's present it. But it's got to be done properly, solidly, not only to suit encyclopedic standards, but to answer inevitable challenges from those with contrasting POV. JNW (talk) 16:33, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

This is of interest, as well [7]. JNW (talk) 17:06, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

That makes claims about Ataturk saving Armenians, but gives no further information. My major concern was that the article reads like a glorification of Ataturk. I admit that my editing was likely POV in the opposite direction, and that something neutral would be far better suited. The most obvious example (as stated above) is the article's claim that Ataturk "liberated" the lands of modern Turkey from Armenians and Greeks. There are lots of other minor pints too. 198.54.202.218 (talk) 08:09, 8 October 2008 (UTC)