Kemal's Turkey: The Privatization of Islam and the Creation of Mustafa Kemal's Statist Republic

Author: Benjamin Gabriel Arrona

Advisor: Christine Philliou

"While not completely following the Chaterjee playbook, the rise of Mustafa Kemal from a young army officer in the Ottoman Army to the founder of the Republic of Turkey is far from simplistic. While igniting the fumes of the problematic, Kemal embraced, modified and rewrote the thematic image of Turkey, transforming the "sick man of Europe" into the secular, autonomous, and sovereign Republic of Turkey. Inspired by Western thought and the French practice of laicite, Mustafa Kemal diluted Islam as the central hegemonic power in Turkey by reinforcing reforms implemented by the Committee of Union and Progress, splitting the religious establishment into public and private spheres, continuously downsizing the public role the Islamic religious establishment played, and reforming state-run apparatuses. He placed himself as the autonomous, undisputed, and unquestionable secular prophet of the Republic of Turkey by inventing a distinct form of nationalism that was rooted in the cults of secularism, statism, fetishism."