I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap.
– Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of modern Turkey
he also despised islam alot
i can understand why
So what’s the stance on “anti-Zionism is antisemitism?”
Atatürk died 10 years before Israel became a state. So I’m guessing his stance would be “what are you talking about?”
Well, the Zionist movement and the plan to create a Jewish state in Palestine dates back another 50 years – a time when Palestine was a part of the Ottoman Empire, so if he was familiar with it I’m sure he had some opinion.
The movement was very different before Israel was a state. There were militant branches, but it was not an overall militant movement and the idea of the displacement, let alone the apartheid and eventual genocide of Palestinians was far from universal. And really, in the 1930s, the focus was more getting as many Jews out of Europe as possible.
EDIT: FWIW, I just found this-
Now in his mid-twenties, Mustafa Kemal was obsessed with the idea of Westernizing the Ottoman Empire. While in Palestine, he went to Jerusalem in order to seek the counsel of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. Revealed in his 2011 biography of Mustafa Kemal, Princeton scholar M. Sukru Hanioglu writes that the young officer hoped to understand from Ben-Yehuda how he had managed to reinvent the Hebrew language after millennia of disuse and make it a cornerstone of Zionist culture. Mustafa Kemal would mimic this feat in 1928 by changing the Turkish alphabet from Arabic to Latin characters. Though we know little of his attitude towards the Zionist project, Mustafa Kemal’s encounter with Ben-Yehuda shows that he was acutely aware of the tiny Jewish renaissance that was taking place in Palestine, and he may have seen it as a validation of the nationalist enterprise he would launch several years later.
https://www.thetower.org/article/ataturk-ben-gurion-and-turkeys-road-not-taken/
So it sounds like he was at least somewhat sympathetic to some Zionist ideas in the 1930s.
Good find. Your Google skills are better than mine… or maybe I just gave up too soon.
I did find on Wikipedia, though, that the original Zionist plans were for a secular state with majority Jewish citizens, so yeah, definitely not what we have today.
Not really surprising since Moses Hess was a socialist Jew who inspired both Karl Marx’s ideas on communism and Theodore Herzl’s ideas on Zionism. Hess did become religious later in life, but when he was at his peak, he was inspired by the Jewish philosopher Spinoza (who was very close to an atheist) and Renaissance humanists. I have read that Herzl was an atheist too, but I’ve never tried to confirm it. I do know that, as you said, his vision of Israel was of a secular state and his impetus was mostly “Jews need to get the fuck out of Europe before we’re all killed.” And he was pretty much right, unfortunately.
You know what my point is, man. I’ve seen you make it yourself.
When someone conflates concerns with one aspect of a belief system with a vile hatred of all members of that culture, it’s an argument in bad faith.
Okay, but no one was making that argument before Atatürk died. That’s not really what the Zionism movement was saying at the time. There was plenty of real antisemitism what with the whole Adolf Hitler thing…
Good to know that he was appointed president of Islam, speaking for all Muslims everywhere.
Did he fix the inflation yet?
according his theory of economy fucking up the economy is the new fix for inflation
As fucked as it sounds, you’d hear something similar from half the politicians in America if you asked about the bible.
You absolutely would.
Site is banned in Turkey
he is just cranking up islamism before the local elections because one of his islamist allies decided to go to the elections on their own so Erdogan doesn’t wanna lose votes to them.
He should get Sharia law in Turkey then. But he wouldnt dare.
Do you know which country has Sharia? Greece, or at least the muslims in Greece(only in Thrace region), because 100+ years ago when treaties were signed with Turkey/Ottoman Empire, Greece agreed to let the muslims in Greece have Sharia law for family issues.
Because of this, the greek state assigns a Mufti(because he is a judge) while the muslim population in Greece obviously chooses their own Mufti(because he is a muslim priest). This has been a point of contention.
In fact, muslims in Greece werent even allowed to use normal greek law until a few years ago when the leftist government voted to give them the option.
okay.
