How Turkey and Iran Changed Course Essay

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Turkey and Iran

In the early 1920s both Turkey and Iran found themselves in an identity crisis. Formerly famous for their respective empires that were now crumbling, they found themselves in need of resurgence after the previous institutions of government had failed them. Mustafa Kemal (1923) or Ataturk, which means father of Turks, and Reza Shah (1925) came to power and contributed to the formation of the modern day national identity. They are both celebrated leaders who generated the feelings of nationalism and brought their people together to acknowledge and be proud of their national identity.

It was a revolutionary time for the Turks and Ataturk was determined to bring the nation from a "backward" land (compared to the developed West) to a more "respectable" nation of sophisticated and progressive ideals and culture. As a true nationalist he aimed to create a homogeneous, ethnically Turkish state. Likewise in Iran, the Persians led by Raza Shah began a course of modernization, which included shifting to a constitutional monarchy (which lasted until the 1979 revolution) and taking an internationalist perspective similar to Turkey's. This paper will compare and contrast the initiatives that Ataturk and Reza Shah undertook to transform their respective citizenries into Turkish and Iranian nationalists, with a brief discussion of their reforms' effectiveness in the light of more recent changes in each region.

In post-Ottoman Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk emerged from Gallipoli, a hero of the Turks for having fended off the British. Turkey's geographical position between Europe and Asia made it a very important region from a political point-of-view. In 1923, when Ataturk came to power, he leveraged that factor to prove to both sides that Turkey could be a respected nation by the dominant powers in the world. Ataturk recognized this importance and thereafter set upon a course of leadership that included modernizing the Turkish nation and initiating something unique in the Middle East region. He set out on a path to secularize the country and separate religion from politics and government. The Kemalist ideology had its fundamentals based on the belief that westernizing the nation would be the surest path for it to be a modern and secular one. In reforms that would later come to be known as the 'Kemalist project' a series of political, legal, cultural, social, and economic policy changes were implemented to westernize the nation. (Lawlor) Ataturk embarked on a strategy that involved banning the caliph, shutting down the religious courts, outlawing the fez (the orthodox religious symbol), modeling its workweek on Europe by adopting the concept of the European weekend, criminalized polygamy, and promoted women's rights. (Lawlor) This sweep of changes across the different institutions of turkey was enforced to put it on the fast track of adapting the western lifestyle and abandoning old Turkish model.

Ataturk embarked on a mission to westernize the Turks by adopting a constitution similar to its Western neighbors in Europe. Rather than as a Muslim state, the idea was to re-brand Turkey as a secular nation-state with European progressive ideals at heart. Like Reza Shah, Ataturk focused on updating the country's infrastructure by implementing reforms in the courts, in the law making branches of government and in the country's economic system. By removing the caliphate from power, Ataturk cemented the progressive push for secularization. Turkey would be a country where clerics were not rulers. Atakurk oversaw a new penal code that was based on the Italian law code, shut the Muslim court system and began a methodical course of taking Islam out of the political discourse. Even in the social realm, however, a de-Islamification was enacted, with Turkey sponsoring the State Art and Sculpture Museum, which was significant because Muslims tended not to partake in sculpture (an ancient Grecian/Western/Christian form of art) as it resembled idolatry for them. By promoting sculpture, Ataturk was attempting to initiate a cultural reform that removed the Islamic traditions from the core of the Turkish peoples and replaced it with a modern, European, progressive core. At the same time, Ataturk promoted the local, ethnic cultures of the Turks, the regional folk arts, etc. New schools were begun as they were in Iran and the two countries essentially mirrored one another in their initiatives to reform their respective countries and disconnect them from their Islamic past.

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the communists seized control of the Russian Empire, the Persian Empire became a strategic access point for the British, attempting to attack Russia. Reza Khan before he became Shah was used by the British to help on this front.

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Reza Shah emerged from the triangle of motivations involving the British, the Soviet front, and the Persians, to lead the Persian people into the next chapter of their destiny. He did so by first overthrowing the Qajar dynasty. As Shah, he set about initiating reforms designed to remove the clerical influence from the country's governance. Reza Shah wanted Iran to resemble and reflect the cultural ideals of the West, with schools that were European-oriented, with women who could take part in society outside the home, and with an economy and business sector that could take part in the capitalistic enterprises. These reforms were supported by an updating of the country's infrastructure, with railways, courts, and cultural dress all getting a makeover so as to appear more Western. The Trans-Iranian Railway was built, the University of Tehran opened, and the Women's Awakening commenced. The Women's Awakening petitioned for the removal of the Muslim veil (the chador) from society, but the religious community objected. Reza Shah also allowed the Jews to move from the ghettoes where they had been isolated and he sought a more collaborative relationship with Jewish leaders.

Reza Shah also paid close attention to the military and supported close ties with the soldiery. He also promoted the concept of Iranian ethnicity and nationality by requesting the UN and the nations of the world to refer to their country as Iran rather than Persia, as Iran was how the Iranian people themselves had historically identified themselves, whereas Persia was the term the West had used to identify them.

Ataturk pushed for the same ethnic, nationalistic fervor and had schoolchildren recite, "I am a Turk, honest and hardworking. My principle is to protect the younger, to respect the elder, to love my homeland and my nation more than myself. My ideal is to rise, to progress," before praising Ataturk for his forward thinking; this was the daily refrain of school children for 80 years (Cook). But with the election of Erdogan in 2002, Turkey began to change, just as Iran had begun to change in 1979 with the rise of Khomeini. Both had an impact on the reforms wrought by the respective leaders of the previous generation.

In Turkey, Erdogan has worked "to eliminate Ataturk-inspired restrictions on Islam and to undercut the old judicial and military order that guarded against the Islamization of Turkey" (Fradkin, Libby). Erdogan has overseen the reemergence of Islamism in Turkey and served as the administrator willing to work with extremist groups, such as ISIS in the Middle East to garner power for himself against the ethnic Kurds he has sought to exterminate in southern Turkey, northern Syria. Rather than embracing the geopolitical promise of Turkey within the Western spectrum as Ataturk did, Erdogan has sought to exploit it against the West and against Russia, uniting himself to the Saudis -- the other militantly Islamic nation in the Middle East -- at least in terms of the support of extremist organizations goes. Erdogan has moved Turkey backwards from its progressive values, and has arrested journalists and anyone who is critical of his regime; his reign has been scandal-ridden, his son accused of trafficking oil purchased from ISIS and used to sell to Israel. He has been hounded by human rights violations, and has even had the temerity to attack a Russian airplane and machine-gun the parachuting pilot -- daring Russia to retaliate. He has been an aggressor where Ataturk and his reforms were meant to pacify and progress; he has been retrogressive in the sense of supporting the Islamification of Turkey -- and the effect is even now being felt in Europe, where a wave of Syrian refugees is being unleashed through Turkey onto Europe in a kind of blackmail scheme, in which Erdogan's plan is to enrich himself (extorting funds from the ECB in order to "hold back" the waves of immigrants).

In short, Erdogan has caused Turkey to move away from the ideals upheld by Ataturk and pushed forward in the decades prior to Erdogan's rise to power. In Iran, a similar occurrence happened with the rise of Khomeini in 1979, as the cleric brought Islamization back to the front-and-center of the Iranian culture by promoting a Death to the West mentality, which centered on the immorality of Western culture and the West's intrusion into Iranian politics through its support of the Shah in the earlier years. Khomeini appealed to a youthful, rebellious and populist….....

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