Turkey’s warring personality cults
In the absence of well-grounded institutions, politics in Turkey often devolves into a battle of personalities, as we see now between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen.
On Feb. 26, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan celebrated his 60th birthday. On Twitter, though, some of Erdogan’s devoted supporters gave an additional meaning to this important date. Their hashtag went viral in just a couple of hours: #milletindogumgunu, which literally means “the birthday of the nation.”
In other words, according to these people, Erdogan is the embodiment of his whole nation.
This inevitably reminded me of another political line in Turkey, which also sees its venerated leader as the personification of the whole Turkish nation. Kemalism glorifies Turkey’s first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, as the “father” of all Turks. (In fact, the surname Ataturk, given to him by the Turkish Grand National Assembly, literally means “the father of Turks.”) No wonder Kemalists did the exact same thing with Ataturk's presumed birthday of May 19. That date has been celebrated in Turkey for decades as the birthday of Ataturk and the Turkish nation. The Education Ministry's website still promotes the infusion of the birthdays of the "supreme leader" and his nation.
More similarities between Kemalism and the nascent Erdoganism have emerged in the wake of real or perceived political attacks on Erdogan. Last December, during a public rally in Istanbul, some young supporters of Erdogan greeted him wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Adam izindeyiz,” which means “Man, we are following you.” This was clearly a pun on the famous Kemalist slogan “Atam izindeyiz,” which means, “Father, we are following you.” (The word “adam,” in this context, means not just any man, but a righteous man.)
