The Republican Revolution and Atatürk’s national synthesis

Every ideology, every revolutionary program, every system of thought, every doctrine, every paradigm, and every political system matures within its own historical, social, political, class-based, cultural, economic, and geographical conditions. They emerge onto the stage of history as a synthesis, a product, and an accumulation of these factors. No idea can outsmart history, pole-vault over it, or tunnel beneath it. This simple truth holds valid everywhere in the world. Because it is a historical iron law. 

For example, the socialism of the USSR was different from the socialism of China, which is quite large in scale and holds a voluminous position on the global stage. Then the USSR collapsed in 1991. China continued on its path by calling its own application and practice "socialism with Chinese characteristics" and reached its current position. China owes its miracle to this. 

The socialism of Cuba and the socialism of North Korea are also different. Because the conditions, histories, geographies, and social structures of the two countries are different. The following words of Prof. Dr. Nelson Varona, who served as a Cultural Attaché at the Cuban Embassy in Germany years ago, are instructive: "Cuba's experience of socialism has been shaped and matured within its own historical characteristics and objective conditions. For this reason, it cannot be compared with the socialism of Eastern Europe or any other region or country" ("21 thousand foreign students in Cuban universities", Aydınlık Magazine, July 5, 2009, p: 54). 

In this context, it must be carefully, primarily, and especially stated that no ideology is independent of history, social structure, cultural climate, or the level of economic development. It cannot be implemented independently. 

ATATÜRK’S DIFFERENCE AND SUCCESS 

The fundamental difference between Mustafa Kemal Pasha and all the revolutionary, well-intentioned, idealistic, patriotic, and self-sacrificing pioneers and cadres—including the Young Turks and the Unionists, of which he was also a member—is both his genius regarding timing and his ability to evaluate the realities of society together with Turkey's historical conditions, accumulation, experience, and the objective conditions of the era to find solutions. In this context, Gazi Pasha’s Republican synthesis is unique. 

Mustafa Kemal Pasha is the product of the modernization process—specifically military modernization—of a state like the Ottoman Empire, which had struggled for over 100 years to prevent disintegration, division, rebellions, and occupations; had sought remedies to end its backwardness; had imitated Europe and emulated its superstructure institutions; and had sent its intellectuals, politicians, officers, and bureaucrats to Europe to receive education, increase their knowledge and experience, and conduct research. He is also an elite intellectual who drew the necessary lessons from all these processes. 

It is because he drew those lessons that he did not seek solutions in external dynamics like the Ottoman intellectuals, the Tanzimat pashas, or the armistice-era intellectuals. On the contrary, he turned to internal dynamics. He started the war in Anatolia, organized in Anatolia, and opened the Veteran Assembly, the Constituent Assembly, in Anatolia. As an Ottoman Pasha—and a very successful, charismatic, and famous one at that—he identified the bitter truth long before. That bitter truth is that the Ottoman State had historically completed its lifespan and that objective conditions were against the state. The Republic is the work and the pinnacle of this consciousness, this struggle, this claim, and this belief. 

In short, Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is a revolutionary, a state founder, a leader of the War of Independence, and a commander who performed a situational assessment—in the terminology favored by soldiers—or a force analysis (political analysis, economic analysis, class analysis) in Marxist terminology, using a scientific method in a realistic and objective manner.