Criticisms of the Turkish Revolution in the Historiography of Şevket Süreyya Aydemir
Şevket Süreyya Aydemir is one of the important figures of Turkish intellectual life in the Republican period. Aydemir, the chief ideologist of the “Kadro” movement, which marked the intellectual life of the Republican period, was also on the writing staff of “Yön” journal, which had a lot of influence in the 1960s. In the 1960s and 1970s, Aydemir wrote biographies in order of about Atatürk, İsmet Inönü, Adnan Menderes and Enver Paşa, and wrote A History of Modern Turkey through these people, whom he considered as “axis personalities”. When Aydemir's biographies were examined, it was observed that he made similar criticisms of all the periods he dealt with. As a man of “doctrine and cadre", Aydemir claimed that the Turkish revolution was not based on a deep philosophical system because the personalities who carried out the revolution did not come from such a formation. At this point, Aydemir, who thinks that the “intellectual” group should have the mission to lead the revolution, believes that both bureaucratic wheels are blocking the way of this group, and also those intellectuals do not have such an idealism. According to Aydemir, although the Turkish Revolution achieved an important stage, especially during the reign of Atatürk, it should have been “replenished” after Atatürk, but those who replaced it could not achieve this.
Şevket Süreyya Aydemir’in Tarihî Metinlerinde Türk İnkılâbına Eleştiriler
Şevket Süreyya Aydemir cumhuriyet dönemi Türk fikir hayatının önemli isimlerinden birisidir. Cumhuriyet dönemi fikir hayatına damga vuran “Kadro” hareketinin baş ideoloğu olan Aydemir, 1960’ı yıllarda çok etki yaratmış olan “Yön” dergisinin de yazar kadrosunda yer almıştır. Aydemir, 1960’lı ve 1970’li yıllarda sırasıyla Atatürk, İsmet İnönü, Adnan Menderes ve Enver Paşa’ya dair biyografiler kaleme almış ve “mihver şahsiyet” olarak gördüğü bu kişiler üzerinden, Modern Türkiye Tarihi yazmıştır. Aydemir’in biyografileri tetkik edildiğinde, ele aldığı bütün dönemlere dair benzer eleştirilerde bulunduğu müşahede edilmiştir. “Doktrin ve kadro” adamı olarak Aydemir, Türk inkılabının derin bir felsefî sisteme dayanmadığını çünkü inkılabı gerçekleştiren şahsiyetlerin böyle bir formasyondan gelmediğini ileri sürmüştür. Bu noktada “aydın” zümresinin, inkılaba öncülük etme misyonu olması gerektiğini düşünen Aydemir hem bürokratik çarkların söz konusu zümrenin önünü kapadığını hem de aydınların bu idealizme sahip olmadığını düşünmektedir. Aydemir’e göre Türk İnkılâbı bilhassa Atatürk döneminde önemli bir aşama kaydetmiş olsa da Atatürk sonrasında “ikmal edilmeliydi” ancak yerine gelenler bunu gerçekleştiremedi.
Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, one of the important intellectual men of the Republic period, published biographies entitled “One Man” in three volumes between 1963 and 1965, “the second man” in three volumes between 1966 and 1968, “the drama of Menderes” in 1969 and “Enver Pasha from Macedonia to Central Asia” in three volumes between 1970-1972. In fact, Aydemir conducted a kind of research on the history of Modern Turkey in the light of these biographies. Remzi Press, where biographies have already been published, has also revealed the nature of these works by using the phrase “the last century of our recent history has been completed” on the back of the last volume.
Turkey’s 1960s were very interesting in terms of the history of political thought as well as political history. Because at this time when doctrinal political parties were founded, doctrinal political movements also acted with the motto “this order must change”, while both right and left movements put forward ideas in which socio-economic analysis was intensive. At this point, Aydemir, who wrote series of biographies during the period in question, seems to have brought quite important criticisms, sometimes explicit and sometimes tacit, about the process of the Turkish Revolution.
Aydemir, does not consider the historical event in which happened in 23 July 1908 called as the “ikinci meşrutiyet” as a revolution, because according to him, in that event whether the Sultanate regime, the internal structure of the state, or any of the religious institutions were changed. At this point, Aydemir, a man of “doctrine and cadre”, criticizes that there is no world, no ideas, no composition of systems in the Young Turks movement, in short, there is no basis for a doctrine. He states that the groups fighting for legitimacy do not enter into a theoretical discussion such as “natural rights”, “divine rights”, which have a place in the history of political thoughts, work only for a parliamentary institution, that is, a status without intellectual depth, so the Young Turks movement can be considered as “not a struggle for ideas and doctrine”, but an “adaptation” effort.
In Aydemir’s article, there are sometimes tacit, sometimes explicit, but intense criticism of the process of “revolution” of the Ataturk era. According to Aydemir, Atatürk and his friends created a new state after winning a “great victory” in the national struggle, now “economic and social Dumlupinars” were needed, because Turkey had to become an equal country politically and economically in a backward, Asian country, civilized world, and be cleansed of the remnants of medieval class and feudalism. But what had to be done to win “economic and social Dumlupinars” in the process of Turkey’s revolution was not fulfilled “as much as necessary”. For a “backward and underdeveloped” country such as Turkey to develop rapidly and form its national economy, the ways to be chosen, the procedures to be followed were not specific. At the Izmit interview, Atatürk said that he would not turn his back on foreign capital, and the Izmir economic Congress, which convened later, represented complete liberalism. This was a “late born and late” liberalism for Turkey because the world was no longer a nineteenthcentury world, the free market in the world was fragmented, Europe had lost its ability to be the economic center of the world. The new leaders of Turkey still looked at the liberal and individual Western Europe of the nineteenth century. In this vein, Aydemir’s most objected point was the 1924 Constitution.
According to Aydemir, the most important mission of the Inönü period was “to replenish Atatürk”. Of course, doctrinism could not be expected from Inönü, who was not a doctrinaire, but the territorial revolution could be carried out, class domination, oligarch colonialism, and Ashraf-ayan derivation could be put to an end. By expanding statehood, great facilities could be created, and capitalism and class fights in the classical sense could not be challenged. Secularism could be deepened; a revolutionary education could be applied instead of “copy education from the West”. During the reign of Atatürk, the peasant was “untouched”, while socioeconomic problems in the East continued. Because of this, a populist, secular, revolutionary, interventionist” national republic “should be established with the order of the” national chief”, and the dynamism of the revolution should be ensured. Inönü failed to meet these expectations.
“To continue and replenish Atatürk”; according to Aydemir, this was not possible after Atatürk’s death. Now it was the Democratic Party’s turn to make it happen. The DP had previously given bad signals on May 29, 1950. Menderes discussed the revolutions that took place during the Republic period by classifying them as “revolutions that cost the people or did not cost the people”. In this speech, Menderes also portrayed the May 14 elections as an important revolution that could not be measured by what had been held up to that time. Aydemir, while evaluating the revolutions before him as mild, thought that Menderes signaled a change in the “social structure” and realized it “willingly or unwillingly”. In this speech, Menderes “did not commemorate Atatürk”, broke all the ties left behind by not mentioning the stages such as the abolition of the reign and the introduction of popular rule as the stages of the transition to a multiparty order. DP and Menderes used religion in politics in every sense, contrary to the revolution, and had a “cheap earning experience” by translating the “azans read in the nation’s own language” into Arabic in the early days of its power. Although Turkey was the first example of National Liberation Movements, at the Bandung Conference, the DP government despite the common stance of the Asian and African nations against imperialism, was “the lawyer of the West” not of Atatürk. Since the DP government considered the struggle for independence of Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco as “an internal matter of France”, it was hurting the soul of Atatürk.
On May 27, 1960, a coup took place and the army seized power. But the revolutionaries, who continued the tradition of Ataturk, did not turn the 27 May movement into “economic, social, political” structural changes, they already had no such “horizons”. Thus, Atatürk could not be replenished again. When the Revolution triumphed, the fragmentation of the Revolutionary staff was an immutable law of the revolutions. From the French Revolution of 1789 to the Bolshevik Revolution and even the National Liberation Movement of Turkey, this law was valid in all revolutions. By “bowing his head” to this law on May 27, he was soon torn apart and lost his power of enterprise.
