![]() ![]() Other imperial powers like Britain, France, and Russia toyed with its internal affairs. Over the decades leading up to the First World War, it had been losing territory to nationalist movements in the Balkans. Kemal took part in their 1908 uprising that later became known as the Young Turk Revolution. ![]() This group of shadowy men later became part of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), a radical opposition group. He joined the military and was quickly inducted into a cloak-and-dagger secret society of fellow officers working to overthrow the Sultan. Mustafa Kemal was born in 1881 to a middle-class family in Thessaloniki, then part of the Ottoman Empire. ![]() So why is Mustafa Kemal so favourably remembered in this country?Īnd however much New Zealanders might look at Atatürk through rose-tinted glasses, his name is far from spotless. ![]() One expects that New Zealanders wouldn’t erect monuments to Fascist Italy’s Mussolini, or Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, or Romania’s Nikolai Ceaușescu. It’s absolutely crystal clear … that the quote was made up years after Kemal’s death.” That quote, says Peter Stanley, Honest History’s former president and Professor at the University of New South Wales, is “fraudulent”. Recent research from the Australian organisation Honest History, which is committed to challenging “the misuse of history to serve political or other agendas”, has shown that Mustafa Kemal never said those words, wrote them down, nor thought of them, in 1934 or any other time. They appear most prominently in granite at Gallipoli itself, on Anzac Parade in Canberra, and as part of two monuments to Mustafa Kemal himself in Wellington: at Tarakena Bay, and in Pukeahu National Park, directly in front of the National War Memorial.īecause of those ameliorating words, and because he fought honourably against Anzac troops during the Gallipoli Campaign, New Zealanders have come to view Kemal as a noble and inspirational figure: the father of a nation, a progressive reformer and moderniser, an enlightened leader in the Middle East.īut history is often a bitter pill. In the liturgy of Anzac Day, our most sacred and revered time of national pride, Mustafa Kemal’s words are among the most imperishable, like John McCrae’s ‘In Flanders Fields’, or Laurence Binyon’s ‘For the Fallen’ in their undying promise of remembrance. Ministers and dignitaries use them as an appeal to lofty, conciliatory ideals. They have been repeated at Anzac Day commemorations for it seems as long as modern memory can reach back. These tender words ‘to the Anzac mothers’ are attributed to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Republican Turkey, in 1934. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us, where they lie, side by side here in this country of ours…You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives…You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. The following lines will be familiar to most New Zealanders: National museum Te Papa says it will look at how it can change a WW1 exhibition following revelations that a famous phrase attributed to Turkey’s former leader and war hero, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was in part made up. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |