To understand Modern Turkey, one must examine the mentality of the country’s founder and first strongman, Kemal Ataturk, and his legacy in Turkey today. Under his leadership, the remains of the Ottoman Empire in Anatolia and Asia Minor were forged into Modern Turkey. The Turkish transformation from the dismantled Ottoman state to the Turkish Republic was made in the image of this man, whose last name translated means “father of the Turks.”
Quite the contrary to what Turkish citizens believe, and have marketed to the rest of the world, the Kemalist ideology is exactly what is preventing the country from moving forward. As has been noted by Marcus A. Templar in his recent study Tasting the Bitter Pekmez: Causes of Turkey's Instability argues that:
The reality that haunts the Turkish Republic from its inception is dangerously revealing itself. Kemal's dream was to Europeanize Turkey, but the foundations he forcibly set have remained stagnant while Europe keeps developing. Government institutions in Turkey look back to Kemalism fearing that deviation from Kemalist ideals could bring the end of their state. Turkey has been built on the principles of Pan-Turkism that are no longer acceptable in Europe and, as she is not an ethnically and racially homogenous country, this alone is the cornerstone of its instability.1
The Kemalist ideology also appears to be the main reason why Turkey cannot be relied on to abide by treaties, thereby hindering the normalization of relations between itself on the one hand, and Greece, Cyprus and the European Union on the other.
[1] Marcus A. Templar, "Tasting the Bitter Pekmez: Causes of Turkey's Instability" in Journal of Global Change and Governance Volume I, Number 2 (2008).
