“There is no distinction between modern and ancient history in the Middle East. No region is more obsessed with its own past.” This is how Richard Engel describes the region in his book, ‘And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East’. No stranger to political turmoil, the Middle East and its ‘Muslim’ neighbours have witnessed more than their fair share of colonialism, occupation, war and instability. Persistent regional instability created a synthesis between political memory and individual memory that was contaminated with bloodshed and death. Under this lens, mass memory persistently conjures rare and transformational political periods that are often looked upon reminiscently. The twentieth century generated a plethora of political memories of which some are revered and many are spited but none more controversial than Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Gamal Abdel Nasser. As nearly a century for the former and half a century for the latter have passed, both leaders invoke mixed perspectives of either respect or criticism among their respective citizenry and scholars alike. To wholeheartedly claim that they are good leaders is just as overly simplistic and narrow as claiming they are evil. And to claim them similar only on the basis of stirring controversy, assuming initial presidency of newly-formed republics and sharing military backgrounds is overly simplistic. The obvious differences between them and their countries may place them relatively far on the similarity spectrum, however, this paper will argue that both revolutionary figures, their leadership styles and their regimes are more alike than meets the eye. The paper does not claim that their regimes and values are mirror images of each other, but suggests that their techniques, the general essence/spirit of their presidential periods and the structural frameworks of their political rule, ideology and implementation are much more alike than not. The paper will address these similarities through an examination of notable events during their presidencies, their ideologies, policies, management of opposition, and the reach of their propaganda. In addition, the paper will provide a brief discourse analysis of their speeches in proof of the argument.
Prior to becoming the founding father of modern-day Turkey, Mustafa Kemal was a military commander under the Ottoman Empire. He first gained recognition and fame during World War I and proceeded to rise in military rank. Even before the official dissolution of the caliphate, Kemal displayed national sentiments during battles when he used nationalistic rhetoric to mobilise his inferiors. Despite being Muslim, his interaction with Western countries fostered an appreciation for their political culture, Western modernity and the separation of church and state. It is precisely this Western influence that watered the seeds of his ideology with which he would eventually rule. Kemal’s revolution is unique firstly because it marked a historical turning point for the entire region. The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire meant a political shift for all ‘countries’ that were previously under its domination. His revolution introduced an ideology shift for Turks that previously identified themselves with religious sentiments as opposed to nationalistic ones. Kemal’s vision was based upon the creation of a Western-like modernised republic (as opposed to traditional monarchical rule that was familiar in the region) that separates religion from politics and governs over a group of people who share ethnicity, language and religion, known as Turks. Kemal’s nationalism was both extreme and ethnic and it entailed its subjects to prioritise this nationalism over any other allegiance, mainly to Islam which was translated into his leadership style. Beyond secularism, Kemal adopted laicism whereby the practice of Islam would be limited to the private sphere only. It is because of these visions that Kemal’s revolution is correctly identified as a cultural one as he aimed to completely transform the state and its citizenry. Kemal’s revolution is also defined by precisely what it did not want to be identified with; Islam and the Ottoman past. The policies that will be discussed later in the paper will explore how Kemal situated himself and his republic by the opposition.
Many years later in Egypt, prior to the establishment of the modern-day state, a group of military officers known as the Free Officers, led a revolution against the Egyptian monarchy in 1952, under the leadership of Gemal Abdel Nasser. The revolution replaced the monarchy with a republic that governed with a different set of ideals. Like Kemal, Nasser became the face of the revolution and the most notable symbol of Egypt’s transformation from one era to another. Claiming his position as the second president of the newfound Egyptian republic (after the transitional period), Nasser adopted a transformational strategy that was similar to Kemal’s. Similarly to Turkey’s founding father, Nasser led Egypt with a strategy of modernisation that was built on Egyptian and later Arab nationalism and a separation of Islam from state affairs. Nasser’s nationalism was meant to surpass other forms of identification like Islam. Although not as extreme as Kemal’s laicism, Nasser rejected the synthesis of Islam and politics (political Islam), deeming Islam a personal matter that citizens are free to practice individually and away from politics. Like the preceding revolutionary, Nasser translated this into state policies. In addition, a great deal of Nasser’s leadership as well was defined by what it does not identify with and opposes. Nasser’s leadership while built upon the ideal of modernisation (due to the political nature of Egypt prior to his accession), was defined by its rejection of foreign intervention, the Western version of ‘correct’ statehood and political Islam. The influence of a reactionary identity on Nasser’s leadership is similar to that of Kemal’s. Despite being different (with only secularisation as the common denominator) due to their individual historical contexts, both leadership styles operated by the complete rejection of any affiliation with the preceding leaderships and weaving their oppositional views into the very fabric of their policies and presidencies. This serves to show that in terms of background and political leadership, both Kemal and Nasser shared more than just a military background.
As both went on to create single-party republics, their systems of leadership and political ‘ideologies’ were later coined ‘Kemalism’ and ‘Nasserism’. This indicates two things that both share with respect to their leaderships other than being revolution leaders. Firstly, it notes that not only where they single-party states but they were ideologically and actively single-man states, despite the presence of mother parties in the background. Secondly, it highlights the authoritarian, even, dictatorial, nature of their regimes during the periods of their rule. Kemal’s Turkey was founded wholly and completely on his vision. As the founder of this modernised version of Turkey, he was the one who established what Turkish identity and nationalism are (according to his vision) and went to lay down the pillars of this new society to people through charismatic speeches of how he envisions this transformation. He ensured that government institutions and policies implemented his exact vision and it is through this vision and on its terms that Turkey and Turkish people were identified. As Kemal began theorising his ideals of proper Turkish governing and government, the outcome was an ideology or a doctrine of sort, that was connected specifically to his person. “Although Kemalism began as a set of principles for good governance, they solidified as an ideology when combined with the cult of leadership surrounding Mustafa Kemal.” (Merryman, 2013, p. 35) A discourse analysis of his six-day speech shows how Kemal utilises language to situate himself as the founding father of modern-day Turkey. The discourse analysis also indicates that this same speech ties this ideology or political practice to his person. The speech that was meant to trace the establishment of modern-day Turkey, begins with “I landed at Samsun on the 19th May 1919,” as opposed to retracing the historical events of its inception. This statement and its position as the opener, communicates that the establishment of Turkey not only was a result of his revolution but was incumbent upon and began when Kemal landed in Samsun. He follows this statement by painting a picture of a broken system, degradation and an absence of sovereignty. This structure communicates a message of the ‘saviour’ arriving to find destruction and corruption and sets a tone for the ‘pre-Kemalist’ era. Following this description, he describes his vision for the Turkish nation and the characteristics of a Turk; “dignified and proud,” and follows it with a narration of how he achieved this vision. This structure not only communicates the idea that his ideology and his person are the protagonists of this positive shift, but presents the ‘dignity’ and ‘pride’ that he referred to, as commodities he and only he bestowed unto Turks. As he elaborates on why he had to rebel against the the Ottoman Empire, he says he was “compelled,” proclaiming himself the bastion of righteousness who could not tolerate the previous state of affairs. He follows this with two statements that position his political process as an ideology and proclaim him the founder of the new Turkey. The first statement is “This was how I acted. This practical and and safe way to to success.” It is important to note his use of ‘I’ in association with ‘practical’, ‘safe’ and ‘success’. The second statement is “it was incumbent upon me to develop our entire social organisation, step by step, until it corresponded to the great capability of progress which I perceived in the soul and future of the nation and which I kept to myself in my own consciousness as a national secret.” The use of ‘I’ in this statement attributes both vision and success to Kemal, while the ‘me’ in the beginning positions him as the saviour messiah of Turks. He also associates in very possessive terms ‘my own consciousness’ and ‘national secret’. This serves to link his person to the nation and its success with his person and ideology. What is more, is that his adopted surname ‘Ataturk’ translates to ‘father of the Turks’, further indicating the inter-connectedness between his person and the new Turkish republic.
The political strategies and period of Nasser’s rule were not titled Nasserism “merely because Nasser was the effective ruler but also because the institutional structures employed and policies followed throughout the period reflected the thinking and opinions of Nasser,” (Desouki as quoted by Binder, 2004, p. 50) effectively linking them to his person. He positioned himself as the people’s direct link to politics and Egypt’s highest authority. His rejection of any institutional mediation that positions the state as the highest governing authority is evident with the way he insisted on directly addressing his Egyptian subjects rather than through government institutions. His charisma and use of colloquial street Arabic took him the rest of the way. Nasser displays similar rhetoric to Kemal in a speech he made to the Egyptian Assembly. He says “we have restored Arab honour and renewed Arab dreams.” Clive Holes identifies two ‘we’’s in Nasser’s speeches. The first refers to himself and the people, while the second is only a “reference to Naser.” (Holes, 2003, p. 24) The statement suggests that this ‘we’ is Holes’s second ‘we’. Context of the statement reveals how Nasser positioned himself as the spokesperson of Arabs and the self-proclaimed guarantor of Palestinian liberation and Arab ‘dignity and dreams’ through the same commodification displayed in Kemal’s statement. The declaration inadvertently equates both Nasser and Nasserism with Arab nationalism.
The authoritarian nature of Kemal and Nasser’s leadership is evident in the manufactured link between their political strategy and leadership with their persons. Despite their polished speeches, charismatic characters and introduction of modernity, both revolutionaries adopted a zero tolerance strategy when faced with any opposition. Kemal institutionalised his dictatorship when he created the Independence Tribunals which carried out “instrumental or legal coercion” (Merryman, 2013, p. 52) whenever he faced disagreement. Kemal accused opposers of treason and sent them to the Tribunals, where they would be charged and immediately given the death sentence without any investigation. On other occasions, Kemal ordered the execution of former army companions who demonstrated disagreement or criticism of his policies. Moreover, he exploited an assassination attempt made on his life in 1926 to perform a mass execution of opposition.
Nasser demonstrated his authoritarianism similarly. “Whenever Nasser heard the world ‘no’, it would send him into rage.” (Binder, 2004, p. 58) Any sympathisers of the Muslim Brotherhood, Nasser’s main opposition, were accused of treason, much like Kemal. During a meeting with his advisors on tactical measures of dissolving the Muslim Brotherhood, several of them expressed that the procedure would take time and advised against taking immediate and extreme measures. Nasser’s response was, “I just want within two or three years to arrive at a point where I can press a button and the country will move as I want it to and when I press another button it will stop” (written account by one of his advisors, Naguib, as quoted by Binder, 2004, p. 58). Following the meeting, Nasser, like Kemal, accused them of treason, and planted weapons at a private farm belonging to one of those advisors. Nasser institutionalised his authoritarianism through the ‘mukhabarat’ or the secret service who were in charge of handling the opposition. Furthermore, borrowing from Kemal, Nasser exploited an assassination attempt made on his life to launch a systematic attack on the Muslim Brotherhood and remove any of their sympathisers among his entourage. Throughout his time as president, Nasser had a temporary constitution containing of “marxist and socialist rhetoric,” (Al-Sayyed, 2012), as opposed to a fixed and permanent doctrine of law. The absence of a permanent written code of law throughout his period placed him as the the highest authority and law maker, ultimately broadening the scope of his dictatorial leadership.
Both of their political ideologies were significantly reliant on their reactionary identity which served to position them as the complete opposite of their respective predecessor regimes. The manifestation of Kemal’s reactionary identity was apparent in his policies. In an effort to distance Turkey from its Ottoman Past, Kemal’s policies not only ensured a complete separation of politics and Islam, but oversaw a secularisation of private life. Some of Kemal’s measures included making religious marriage illegal and replacing it with civil marriage, shutting down religious shrines, forbidding surnames with Islamic or Ottoman references, outlawing the Tarboush and mandating that men wear European hats at all times while also discouraging women from wearing Islamic headscarves. The policies on the personal sphere were coupled with anti-Islamic state policies like denouncing Islam as the state religion, adopting the Julian calendar and making Sunday the official day of rest. These policies culminated in the formation of a “state sanctioned form of Islam” (Merryman, 2013, p. 40). He attacked his Ottoman predecessors calling them “foreign usurpers” (Danforth, 2015) and in his six-day speech called them the “laughing stock in the eyes of civilised nations,” in an effort to legitimise his policies. Occasionally though, he “used religion by referencing the Quran in his speeches… in an attempt to unify the people,” (Baltacioglu, 2011) and remaining in their good graces.
Perhaps the most notable reactionary policy implemented by Kemal is Turkey’s official adoption of the Latin alphabet in place of the Ottoman alphabet. This policy, strangely, conjures images of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which the English language was replaced with Newspeak; a minimal language with an ever-decreasing dictionary. Orwell’s Newspeak was introduced as a government tactic to reduce citizens’ capacities to think and effectively stripping them of any form of political agency. While Kemal’s policy only entailed the adoption of the Latin alphabet, it reinforces the notion that language can be manipulated and used as a political tool. Furthermore, in an Jem Berkes’s exploration of the effects of language on public memory, he quotes Lewis and Moss who say that in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “the Inner Party [deprives] people of their own words and in so doing, deprives them of memory” (Lewis and Moss 51, as cited by Berkes, 2000). By submitting to this claim, Kemal’s policy not only guarantees a complete separation of the Ottoman past, but attempts to induce a forgetfulness of the caliphate and Ottoman history by shortening public memory and linking it only with Kemal’s Turkey.
Even more extreme, is Kemal’s reactionary policy of outlawing terms like “Kurd, Laz and Circassian” (Mango, 1999, p. 20). This reactionary policy symbolises an active rejection and ignore-ance of any group that threatens Kemal’s extreme ethnic nationalism on which he built modern-day Turkey. He justifies his ethnic blindness in a civics manual dedicated to his adopted daughter saying that those who identify as Kurds, Laz or otherwise have been “incited to think of themselves” as such, insinuating they have been misguided and fed this identity. He proceeds to call these identity claims “erroneous appellations” and “the product of past periods of tyranny” of which its supporters and revolutionaries are “brainless reactionaries.” (Kemal’s quotes in this paragraph as cited by Mango, 1999, p. 20) These claims are not only dangerous for their historical distortion and falsification, but they also aim to strip these groups of any agency and claim towards self determination. Moreover, they wipe out entire identities (ethnicities), by delegitimising them. The statement also serves to associate any affiliation with these identities as treason and legitimises Kemal as the father and guarantor of Turkish interests and well-being. This legitimisation comes at the expense of discrediting, dissolving and absorbing these indigenous people into his newfound conception of Turkish identity, while effectively attempting to wipe them out of public memory.
Nasser’s reactionary identity festered similarly through rhetoric and policies. His reactionary identity comprises of a complete rejection of foreign intervention and imperialism while also declaring Israel as the number one enemy of the state. This translated into the nationalisation or ‘Egyptoization’ of firms in Egypt and the Suez Canal in 1956. While often using the Suez Canal as a legitimisation of his rule, it also furthered his presentation as the opposer of imperialism and leader of Arab nationalism. His dissemination of Arab nationalist rhetoric positions him in opposition of the “corrupt king” (Beshay, 2014) and is further emboldened by his othering of the other when he uses terms like ‘us’ and ‘them’ whenever he makes a reference to his regime and foreign enemies and their supporters. On the occasions that he looked to the Soviets for support, his rhetoric distinguished them as friends to the cause who “champion freedom and peace.” This discursive choice, besides acting as a legitimator, affiliates any friend of Nasser’s regime with ‘good’ and ‘peace’ and demonises the preceding monarchy and their ‘bad’ foreign allies. Finally, the 1967 war on Israel memorialises his attempted legacy of Arab nationalism, but remembers him as militarily unequipped, which demonstrates the extreme lengths that he will go to situate himself against the preceding monarchy.
Finally, Nasser displayed his reactionary identity towards the synthesis of politics and Islam, a ‘backward’ characteristic of Egypt’s past and a major pillar of the Muslim Brotherhood, in a Kemal-like manner. Nasser’s state claimed official control over religious institutions and banned religious scholars from government negotiations and the possession of political power. While the Muslim Brotherhood were under direct attack and accused by Nasser of religious exploitation, his control of Al-Azhar was more indirect and characterised with a ‘two cups of honey and one cup of vinegar’ tactic. His mechanisms yielded a ‘state-sanctioned Islam’ that was less severe than Kemal’s but nevertheless similar. Additionally, Nasser frequently made leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood the subjects of his jokes in speeches, in an effort to undermine them through ridicule. Last but not least, Nasser, like Kemal, referenced the Quran, however in more frequency, and displayed personal Islamic attributes. It was done more frequently than Kemal because not only do Egypt’s core foundations rest upon Islam but in some way those of Arab nationalism too, for its historical relevance. Kemal on the other hand called it “an Arab religion,” to loosen its hold over his citizens and slowly dissociate it from ‘Turkish-ness’.
In conclusion, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Gamal Abdel Nasser share unique similarities in terms of technique, political framework and authoritarianism. Both are revolutionaries of the past and demonstrated a reactionary identity and policy to situate their politics and distinguish it from the preceding regimes. Ironically, an examination of Turkey and Egypt in the 21st century, particularly after the Arab Spring reveals that recent presidents of both countries demonstrate reactionary identities to the regimes of those two leaders. Additionally, it reveals that the authoritarian nature that both Kemal and Nasser inherited from their predecessors (despite the difference in politics) has been inherited by reactionary leaders of Turkey and Egypt post-Arab Spring. This pattern begs the questions ‘could it be that despite the adoption of democratic policies and incorporation of liberal values, the historically Muslim region is stuck in a cycle of authoritarianism and dictatorship? and does its obsession with the past (whether positive or negative) doom it into repeating history?’
Sources:
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Holes, Clive. “The Uses of Variation: A Study of The Political Speeches of Gamal Abd Al-Nasir.” University of Cambridge, 2003.
Green, David B. Speech by Gamal Abdel Nasser to the Egyptian Assembly. Haaretz, 11 Jan. 2018.
Podeh, Elie, and Onn Winckler. Rethinking Nasserism: Revolution and Historical Memory in Modern Egypt. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. (chapter by Binder)
Merryman, Juliann, “Kemalism: A Revolutionary Ideology and its Islamist Opposition.” Syracuse University Honors Program Capstone Projects, 2013.
Berkes, Jem. “Language as the “Ultimate Weapon” in Nineteen Eighty-Four.” 2000.
Mango, Andrew. “Atatürk and the Kurds.” Middle Eastern Studies, 1999.
Danforth, Nick. “Why Erdogan is like Ataturk.” Politico, 2015.
Baltacioglu, Ayse. “Review: Ataturk: An Intellectual Biography.” OSU, 2011.
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AlSayyad , Nezar. “The Rise of a Pharaoh: The Arab Spring’s First Dictator.” The Berkeley Blog, UC Berkley , 26 Nov. 2012.
Zina Darwish 