The thought of their head of state being married to a woman who wears the dreaded hijab appears too much for some Turks to handle. As al-Ahram put it:
Secularist Turks regard having a head-scarfed first lady in the presidential palace as a violation of the secular state.
And the military is so distressed that they are even hinting at a coup if elections were to ever deliver such a result. It’s a strange case of secularism versus democracy with the Turkish military and some section of the community clearly on the side of secularism. .
This ideology, often called Kemalism after its supposed founder, has created an authoritarian state that, in its fanatical opposition to religious symbols, has veered into the absurd. For example, as Gul Gunver, a Turkish professor, reminds us, the daughter of the presidential candidate wears a wig over her hijab in order to be allowed to attend university.
Anyway, Tariq Nelson has uncovered some photos of an earlier Turkish president and his wife. The photos are over the fold, however I must warn any Turkish secularist readers that these photos may cause severe cognitive dissonance in some people.
For those who don’t know, that’s Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey and the man in whose name and supposed ideology, all this is taking place. The woman with him is his wife, Lâtife Uşaklıgil. Note the absence of any wig over her hijab. Et tu, Lâtife Hanım?
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Good find!!
Ataturk supporters must be having nightmares at this time…
See Get that Hijab Away… Turkey’s Secularists Traumatized! for more background…
[...] Update: Tariq Nelson has uncovered some pictures of Ataturk with his wife, in guess what, a full-blown hijab! What does the red-army have to say now? The pictures have been added below… Austrolabe has an entry and more links to pics (all have been added here). [...]
Atatürk’s wife’s hijab…
Various Muslim blogs have published pictures of the reprobate founder of the Turkish republic and his wife, wearing the standard hijab that his followers in modern Turkey want to ban – see Tariq Nelson, Austrolabe, Muslim Matters, which has the……
It’s not going to make much difference though because the Kemalist religion is no longer about Kemal.
Also, I think Turkey makes a perfect fit with Europe and should be given full membership of the EU immediately. The fascist Turkish state is one of the purest expressions of Enlightenment values on the face of the earth.
Although the Hijab issue is the one highlighted, it is not the main issue here in the power struggle.
This main point is that secular kemalism has failed, there are no influential secular intellectuals and the majority of turks remain religious muslims. It is the secular city elite that are seeing their power eroding and fighting for it. Most of Turkey’s serious intellectuals are religious Muslims.
We can see an echo of that secular turkish failure here in Australia, the secular turkish organizations are run by a cadre of embarrassingly poorly educated fools.
Abdullah Gul’s victory as president would not be a failure of democracy but a triumph of it. One must remember that secular parties (almost always socialist) have only come to power after military intervention in the political process. Each time they have come to power, they have been a poor government and been dismissed by the population. The Erodwan government has liberalized the economy, lowered inflation and overseen a period of economic growth. It has kept its alliance with the US solid, despite not assisting an US invasion of Iraq (cleverly allowing the parliament to vote and the socialist opposition to torpedo it).
The marches we saw in Istanbul were from those secular elite who will be humiliated in any popular vote (and indeed were humiliated when Gul won the poll for president).
When the military intervenes to prop up its secular candidates, it prevents them from becoming a cohesive party and its opposition to the Islamic party actually makes the latter much stronger and gives it wider legitimacy.
This article in the Sunday Times describes how the secular elite are clinging to power despite overwhelming public opposition
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t.....752230.ece
[...] Amir says that they have had hijabi First ladies before, and voila! Who was that! Powered by Gregarious (21) [...]
Baybers,
Almost there with your analysis, but it was hardly Socialism but Fascism/Zionism culprit, and that is why it’s a mystery to me why you did not add the relationship between Kemalism and Fascist regimes in WWII.
Please tell.
Issue is not the veil. Ataturk detested Islam-nor more than he. He only used it when suited to him to seek publicity, and it tells you something he did not destroyed completely the fundation of Othman Empire, but gradually.
And those pictures are proofs for that, since they were taken right after the fall of Othman Empire.
Let them do whatever they want to do. Once they have decided to go against Allah’s wills, now they have to wait what Allah will decide for them. Look at the history, whoever went against Allah’s will, Allah has destroyed them. Allah is most powerful and merciful.
Hi there.
Well done! Fantastic! Find pictures of Latife Usakligil before it was *possible* for a woman to appear unveiled in public and then state that this was what she wanted. My grandmother, who was pretty much LU’s contemporary, was also veiled. Then she tore it off.
Congratulations on such disingenuity. But, unfortunately for you, the 70-odd million Turks who know LU rather better than you, may find this risible, just as the idea that my gram was a closet fundamentalist would seem weak to me.
The problem with your argument, and with your rancor, is that Turks have overwhelming voted to restore religion in Turkey. The only way a secular party can get into power is via a military coup.
The secular Turkish experiment has failed. Secular turkey has had 70 years to achieve something, anything and it has done nothing, except of course be a beggar at the gates of Europe.
If Turks overwhelming want a secular Turkey without any Islamic influence, why then do they repeatedly vote in Islamic parties, whenever they are given a choice? Why do the secular Turks always want to push their secularity down the throats of other Turks, by banning the way an individual dresses?
KimArar, your ideology of secular Turkic based nationalism is a sad failure, and will go down in the dust bin of history. Its actually ethnic fascism, if you happen to be an Armenian or a Kurd.
I suppose I am not entirely correct about the failure of Secular Turkey to advance any ideology, The young Turks did give the Nazis the template for the first modern genocide. Congratulations, Turkish modernism achieved something.
Did she stop with the hijab or keep going?
Have a look at your secular ideology in action:
http://www.breitbart.com/artic....._article=1
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/young_turks.html
A nation fearful of chewing gum infront of an idol of their god, would be scared of a woman in Hijab.
underneath that nice secular facade, its all pretty grim isn’t it?
KimArar, why don’t you go to wonderful secular turkey and try speaking Kurdish in the town square, then you can tell us about how liberated your granny was
Hahahaa, you guys are so funny. So what! You think this is something unknown among Turkish. Of course not, every kid in school ages see these pictures. But, the point is that they were seperated after 6 months of marriage.
Turkey isn’t a state to be taken seriously. How can anyone take a country seriously that simultaneously bans languages, bans clothing, bans discussion of a historical fact (Armenian holocaust) and bans chewing gum in front of statues?
Is it true that Ataturk and LU “were seperated after 6 months of marriage”?
I think alot of people are missing the point. No one really votes for religion and the AK Party has *not* run campaigns as a religious party. They promised and indeed *have delivered* to improve the economy. They are competent and stand for demoatic values which is why people vote for them. Do remember, that they recieved tonly 34% of the vote, but got 65% of the parliament seats because of turkish election laws. The current flap is not over hijab, it is over Gul and the Muslims getting the Presidency after they allready won the parliament. The military is embarrased that they are doing so well running the country. Of course, AK is not running Turkey according to the political Islamist ideology at all, which is why they are so successful, both in the polls and in governing Turkey.
ksufian: Ataturk is under the ground and Allah will judge him, but his legacy (intended or unintended) is still wreaking havoc and dividing the country;
what’s worse is the history of his divorce: he divorced her by saying “I divorce you” three times, and then less than a month later, rewrote the Turkish civil code saying that the Islamic divorce laws (which he’d just invoked to allow his divorce) were misogynistic. Err…?
Muslims need to correct our problems, and then we can correct the propaganda against us. But right now, we have clever tyrants and devious human shayateen, who exploit our own faults to split and weaken our societies…
Kama takunu yuwalla `alaykum. “As you are, so will your leaders be.”
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