Legends are born from gratitude, not fear: An anatomy of a historical fallacy

The claim recently voiced in a medium by Sevan Nişanyan—that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was a "hated figure" by the general public after 1935 and that he turned into a "legend" thanks to the fear felt after his passing—is diametrically opposed not only to historical facts but also to the way social memory functions. This claim is not so much an analysis as it is an example of an anachronism that sacrifices facts for the sake of an ideological construct.

Let us look at the world of the 1930s: Europe was buried in the darkness of fascism; while Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were driving their own societies into meat grinders, Stalin had become the executioner of his own people in the Holodomor and Crimea. To suggest that there was "total hatred" toward a leader who built rational and legal barriers to keep his nation out of this global carnage is to completely misunderstand the discernment and survival instincts of the Anatolian people of that era.

Let us remember Kemal Tahir, known for his genuine opposition and unyielding pen. In his works where he describes the world of the peasant, the provinces, and the ordinary person—from Sağır Dere to Körduman—the love the Anatolian people felt for Atatürk manifests not as "state coercion" but as a "bond of the heart." This gratitude, passed down through generations, is not just for a commander who won a war, but for the will that forged a dignified citizen from the wreckage of a collapsed empire.

History shows us the end of real dictators clearly. If a leader stands only by fear, the reckoning begins the moment their pulse stops. The "purge" and "de-Stalinization" process that began with the 22nd Party Congress shortly after Stalin's death is the most concrete example of this. Those who lead society to catastrophe, like Hitler, are denied at the first opportunity by the very sick collective unconscious that created them. In Turkey, however, despite the many years that have passed since November 10, 1938, the fact that this love has turned into a social line of defense, rather than fading, is proof of how organic and deep-rooted that love is, contrary to the claim.

Hatred of Atatürk is generally fed by the historical complexes of segments that cannot digest the secular legal order, enlightenment revolutions, and national state structure brought by the Republic. The effort of those who lack the ability to organize a state to portray the modern structure established after a collapsed empire—whose corpse they were trying to claim—as an "empire of fear" is a futile moral erosion.

I suggest that today's youth read not those who try to squeeze the bond between Atatürk and society into the parentheses of "fear," but the true leftist and intellectual heritage of these lands. Reading Hasan İzzettin Dinamo, Doğan Avcıoğlu, Attilâ İlhan, Hikmet Kıvılcımlı, or Mehmet Ali Aybar is enough to understand why the Turkish Enlightenment is not a "legend" but a "necessity."

History is not written with lies constructed at a desk, but with the truths hidden in the conscience of society. And that conscience has known very well what, whom, and why it has loved since 1938.