If loyalty to history is not shown, truth takes on a form that will astonish humanity

Some comments, reactions and questions that came in response to our article, in which we asked why recent history constitutes the darkest side of our history, require the subject to be opened up better. First of all, let us say that recent history being darker is not at all in the nature of things. There are always more possibilities for learning more recent history. That is, normally it is so, and it should be. The establishment of a blackout on events that happened only yesterday through tight media and discourse management, and even if it is established, its being achieved, is an occurrence that very rarely takes place. Even under the harshest conditions of despotism, it is not possible to establish absolute control over popular rumors about what has gone on.

Even if on one side despotism makes its own official discourse dominant by preventing the mass circulation of other discourses, it cannot completely prevent the circulation of a historical narrative among the people. It is for precisely this reason that the living witnesses of the scenes of despotism lived in the Single Party years have continued to flow, in defiance of the official discourse, as the richest sources of historiography. However, historiography on events that took place with the testimony not of the people but only of certain relevant official figures has not been a field the people could be acquainted with. The history blackout we are speaking of took place especially in those fields.

We have, for example, a cliché expression: "Mustafa Kemal and his comrades-in-arms." It is a great event that everyone knows but no one speaks of that all of these "comrades," cited as the chief actors of the National Struggle, were gradually, but right at the beginning of the affair, sidelined. Nearly all of them, with their criticisms of the Republican People's Party, founded the Progressive Republican Party, but this too was closed in 1925 on the basis of the Law on the Maintenance of Order (Takrir-i Sükûn), that is, in association with the atmosphere created by the Sheikh Said Rebellion, and thus all these "comrades" were purged.

That is, within the Republic based on the Single Party administration established later, none of Mustafa Kemal's comrades-in-arms other than himself (Kazım Karabekir, Rauf Orbay, Ali Fuat Cebesoy, Refet Bele) found a place, and most of those who did were people who had played no role at all in the National Struggle and joined the process after everything was over. Of these persons, in particular Kazım Karabekir and Rauf Orbay, two of the three pillars of the National Struggle, the very two of whom it would be said that without them it would not have been possible, barely escaped with their lives, as they were also forcibly linked to the İzmir Assassination.

The purge of these "comrades-in-arms" was of course a matter in need of explanation to the people. The sultanate and the caliphate, on which the National Struggle based all its legitimacy and power, were abolished, the Republic was proclaimed in an Assembly of 334 seats with the participation of 158 deputies, and the President was elected. These too need an explanation. But the purge of these comrades, who were partners of the power that had made it possible even to use all these extraordinary powers, also needs a separate explanation.

One of the most important agendas of the Nutuk (the Speech), delivered in the Assembly over 36 hours, is in fact precisely the explanation of this purge. However, this explanation is one full of one-sided accusations, charges and verdicts. It is a narrative that tells that the whole idea of the history of the National Struggle was born in his own mind alone and that its planning was done by himself alone, placing its narrator alone at the center of everything. Taha Parla has analyzed this dimension of this narrative, which as alms leaves no share of the successes or results achieved to anyone else, very well (Türkiye'de Siyasal Kültürün Resmi Kaynakları, Atatürk'ün Nutuk'u, İletişim Yayınları).

The persons in the Nutuk against whom accusations of "negligence," "misguidance," "wretchedness," "foolishness," and even "treason" are made had no possibility of defending themselves. This possibility was not granted to them later either. Most of them were either dead, in prison, or in exile, or, because of the press silenced by the Law on the Maintenance of Order, were entirely deprived of any possibility of replying. Even Kazım Karabekir tried to answer the accusations against him 5 years later, but there was nothing that did not befall him because of this attempt, and his book was taken from the printing house and burned; probably the existing copies were pursued with raids and spies, and any word that could say something over the words in the Nutuk was murdered before the possibility of its being uttered was even born.

Mustafa Kemal's Nutuk, as the most important figure in the history of the National Struggle, is of course a very important and valuable source for historiography. But however important it may be, if this source speaks by blocking the way of narratives other than itself, who can ignore that there is a problem there? Why was there fear of Kazım Karabekir or others objecting to this historiography? Who else, like Kazım Karabekir, was prevented from speaking? In any case it is not hard to guess that the others learned a lesson from what befell one. What Sultan Vahdettin, who sent Mustafa Kemal to Samsun by assigning him, said to his honorary aide-de-camp, we have never heard or learned from him. Even the accounts on this subject we know only through what Mustafa Kemal told. For a sound historiography, is this monopoly of narration not a large enough blackout? Moreover in an environment where even asking this question itself can immediately be met with an accusation?

Some of the reactions to our article say that Atatürk was against Westernization, which has no side to be taken seriously. To characterize a leader who all his life made Westernizing the country his cause as anti-Western merely so as not to associate him with Western imperialism means inventing a new Atatürk. To characterize as anti-Western Atatürk, who tried to Westernize the country with its dress, its alphabet, even its history, its identity, its race, is an absurd invention that excessively strains the facts.

We say "even its race"! Westernism is so immanent even in the Turkish History Thesis, of which Atatürk was the pioneer, that it was claimed that the origin of the Aryan race was the Turkish race. Even Afet İnan took this thesis, which he concocted in order to distinguish himself from the real Turks in Central Asia, because he was ashamed of them, so seriously that she named her daughter Âri.

Here, however, we are not saying that the Nutuk will not constitute a source for history. What we are saying is that the Nutuk, which is full of various claims, charges and accusations about others, cannot on its own constitute a source, and that the people who had acquired a right of reply were prevented from speaking at the very time and place. This information itself is a reality that must be kept in view when reading the Nutuk. Otherwise one has read a one-sided indictment, which would be a great violation against fidelity to history. Let us not forget that Mustafa Kemal himself said, "Writing history is as important as making history. If the one who writes is not faithful to the one who makes, the unchanging truth takes on a nature that will bewilder humanity."

On the Nutuk, I can also recommend, among recent works, Prof. Dr. Bekir Biçer's book "Nutuk: Gerçek mi Kurgu mu?" (The Nutuk: Fact or Fiction?) from Beyan Publications' "Tarihin Gerçek Yüzü" (The True Face of History) series.