The statues are watching us

In Türkiye, the Atatürk statues debate appears to have flared up again recently, with statues being moved, removed or left unprotected during local administrations' square renovation works, and these moments spreading on social media. Most recently, the news that the Atatürk statue was torn from its place during landscaping works at Gerenköy Square in the Foça district of İzmir and left unprotected at the roadside, together with images of the statue seeming to have been carelessly cast aside, spread rapidly on social media and fueled a national-level debate about "disrespect" and "neglect."

Of course, how far we have come on this matter can be gauged when we recall what Prof. Atilla Yayla said in a speech somewhere about 15 years ago, in the face of this abundance and singularity of Atatürk statues in the country, to the effect of "if someone came from outside, would they ask: is there nobody else in this country but this man?" In that debate, the issue quickly moved away from statues and turned into a debate over referring to Atatürk as "this man." The wording "this man" was regarded as a violation of sanctity when it came to Atatürk.

On this occasion, if you will, let us take a short stroll through the history of Atatürk statues:

On 5 August 1935 the newspaper Cumhuriyet came out with a report carrying in its headline the words "Atatürk is a half-god; he is the father of the Turks. For no head of state in his lifetime have so many statues been erected; neither Mussolini's nor Hitler's nor Lenin's monuments can be measured against his." It is quite clear that everyone today would find it strange to boast of what it was boasting about.

To outdo other countries, through the intensive efforts displayed from the outset to erect his own statues all over the country while he was alive, was truly no small thing. Mussolini, Hitler and Lenin were important figures who stood out in their time for their dictatorships and governed their countries with despotism. But did they simply not think of erecting their own statues while alive, or did they lack enough sympathy from their peoples to have statues erected to them?

Then again, is a popular sympathy even required for this? Which people would think of spontaneously erecting a statue to its leader while he is alive? Moreover, Türkiye, in terms of Muslim belief, culture and tradition, is not a country on good terms with statues. In fact there is a serious antipathy toward the statue as a plastic work of art, let alone of any concrete person, even of an unknown or abstract human figure. That is why statue policies in Türkiye have always meant meeting the Muslim people in an area of significant tension. But there it is: like many things, statues too come into play against the people, though this time not even for the people, to sanctify authority through a direct visual, plastic language for a society whose literacy rate was perhaps low.

Mustafa Kemal, positioned in the Nutuk as the one man and sole savior at the center of the entire National Struggle, set about carefully building his own cult himself, through the narrative of history and from a very early time. In the statues too the same care stands out in all its singularity and grandeur. Already in 1926, that is, in the 3rd year of the Republic's founding, a monumental statue made by the Austrian sculptor Heinrich Krippel on commission from the Istanbul Municipality was erected at Sarayburnu. Considering the order, preparation and construction stages of this statue erected on 3 October, it is understood that the statue's order had been placed as soon as the Republic was founded.

THE HERMENEUTICS OF THE STATUE

The same sculptor also signed the Victory Monument in Ankara, the Monument of Honor in Samsun and the Atatürk Monument in Konya in those same years. In all the statues Mustafa Kemal is represented, like a hero out of the world of mythology, and as the sole hero. This first statue at Sarayburnu in particular, in terms of its location and form, lends itself quite well to interesting inferences. Aylin Tekiner's book titled Atatürk Heykelleri: Kült, Estetik, Siyaset (2010), published by İletişim, is a book that tells the whole story of the Atatürk statues very well from beginning to end. According to her, Mustafa Kemal erected this first statue of himself in Istanbul, where sultans had sat since 1453, that is for 400 years, and on which Mustafa Kemal turned his back by moving the capital to Ankara (p. 70 ff.).

Stefan Plaggenborg's Tarihe Emretmek, Kemalist Türkiye, Faşist İtalya, Sosyalist Rusya (2014, translated by Hulki Demirel), also published by İletişim, interprets the meaning of this choice for the first statue as follows:

"The place where the statue was erected was a historic spot, right at the foot of Topkapı Palace on the sea side, in Gülhane Park, in the heart of the old power, because Grand Vizier Mustafa Reşid Pasha had read there in 1839 that famous edict which launched the Tanzimat reforms and was thus planned to Europeanize the country. Now Mustafa Kemal was completing his work. The place where the statue was positioned served to document this historical continuity and was certainly not chosen by coincidence. That the figure of the state's founder had turned its back on the palace and Istanbul and that its gaze was directed over the Bosphorus toward Anatolia was also meaningful" (p. 244).

That this first statue, in which Mustafa Kemal is represented alone and in a quite grandiose stance, was erected in Istanbul rather than Ankara implies, on the one hand, that he alone took on the mission of Mustafa Reşid Pasha, who had launched the Westernization movements, and positions it, on the other, as a monument to the victory won against the sultanate of Istanbul. Indeed, was the victory not won, more than against the British or the Greeks, against that sultanate that had ruled in Istanbul for 460 years?

In the same year a statue was also erected in pious, conservative Konya, where only 4 years earlier many of its people had been killed in the suppression of the Delibaş Rebellion and where, through the Independence Tribunals set up, over 1,500 of its people had been hanged on gallows as an example to the world.

The statue there too has very interesting dimensions that can be interpreted in connection both with this history and with Konya's conservative identity and past. Many interpretations are made even from the fact that Mustafa Kemal in this statue has his back turned to the city of Konya. Again in the same year, in a magnificent victory monument placed in Ankara's Ulus Square, emphasizing military success, the victorious (sole) commander of the "War of Liberation" is depicted on horseback in a heroic design. On the broad base of the monument, spread over a wide area, are reliefs of scenes from the war that lasted between 1919 and 1921 (Tekiner, p. 89; Plaggenborg, p. 244).

In all the statues Mustafa Kemal is represented alone. No one who would share in his saviorhood and leadership is given a place in the representations. If someone must be at his side, only anonymous figures representing the nation will be given a place. Only in the Taksim Republic Monument (1927) do İsmet İnönü and Fevzi Çakmak also take form as statues for the first time (Tekiner, pp. 107-8).

In this statue, which represents the heroes of the National Struggle, Kazım Karabekir, Rauf Orbay and other comrades-in-arms who actually deserved more to be there are still absent. The other two find a place as a kind of anonymized figures who throughout their whole lives made no objection beside him and almost obeyed him unconditionally.

To be continued…