The moment arm of the Republic's acceleration

Do not be misled by the title; do not mistake this for an article on the laws of physics.

This is also not an article written by someone with deep historical and philosophical knowledge.

This is a straightforward article about the Republic and Atatürk.

Therefore, I ask for your understanding regarding this piece by an ordinary civil engineer like myself, who dares to speak on history despite not being a historian or a philosopher academic.

After this honest warning, let us continue.

The day we succeeded in obtaining mechanical energy from the steam of heated water, humanity did not just invent a new machine.

It shifted the world's center of gravity.

While our new-generation storyteller, Cübbeli Hoca, may continue to object with his characteristic "pssh" whenever the world's billions of years of history are mentioned, the change on a scale unseen in the last ten thousand years of human history took place within just a few centuries.

Moreover, it cannot be stopped.

The Industrial Revolution did not just change the mode of production. It also changed the centers of gravity for capital, knowledge, military power, population, the state, and ultimately, civilization.

If you look at it through the eyes of a civil engineer, the issue becomes a bit more understandable.

For thousands of years, the world's center of gravity and its center of attraction were more or less aligned.

The moment was small.

The system was largely static.

The production mode of the agrarian society did not change, human dependence on the land continued, and the wealth of states was measured primarily by the land they possessed, the taxes collected from those lands, and, when necessary, the power to seize the land of other societies.

Then, one of the centers began to move.

First, the steam engine.

Then, the railway.

Electricity.

Oil.

The internal combustion engine.

Chemistry.

Mass production.

The telegraph.

The telephone.

Radio.

The computer.

The internet.

Artificial intelligence.

Each new technology pushed the distance between the world's center of gravity and its center of attraction a little further apart.

Engineering knows that force alone is not enough.

As the distance between the force and the center of rotation increases, the moment grows.

The moment arm of the modern age is technology.

As the distance grew, the moment grew.

As the moment grew, the world accelerated.

The state of structures that cannot carry this dynamic load is evident.

But the state of societies that can read the frequency of the load, change their own natural frequency accordingly, and increase their rigidity or flex when necessary is also evident.

Some tried to swim against the wave created by the Industrial Revolution.

Some pulled up to the shore and waited for the wave to pass.

Others, with the skill of a surfer, got on top of the wave and added its kinetic energy to their own movement.

A significant portion of what we call the "developed world" today consists of those in this last group.

The difference is not just a difference in wealth.

It is about how a society perceives time.

Traditional society produces legitimacy from the past.

Modern society produces it from the future.

In an industrial society, the fundamental question of the state shifts from "What did our ancestors do?" to "What should we produce tomorrow?"

This is exactly where the Atatürk issue begins.

If you read Atatürk only as a war hero, you will misunderstand him.

You will see a successful soldier who won the War of Independence.

However, what truly makes Atatürk interesting is what he did after the military victory.

Because in military service, you know where the enemy is.

In modernization, the enemy is often invisible.

It is hidden in the calendar.

It is hidden in the alphabet.

It is hidden in the education system.

It is hidden in the place of women in society.

It is hidden in the law.

It is hidden in the mode of production.

It is hidden in state institutions.

It is hidden in the relationship established with science.

Mustafa Kemal's main struggle was not just for Turkey to gain its political independence.

It was to change Turkey's time.

This was essentially the fundamental problem in the last two centuries of the Ottoman Empire.

Europe had moved to a different historical time.

The Ottoman Empire, on the other hand, was largely trying to solve the problems of the new time with the institutions of the old time.

On one side, there was industrial capitalism, modern bureaucracy, the nation-state, mass production, and the scientific revolution.

On the other side, there was an empire based on agricultural production, with limited industrialization, low literacy, and falling apart.

The difference between them could no longer be closed just by the number of soldiers.

Because the factory that produced the cannon had become more decisive than the soldier using the cannon.

Atatürk saw this.

Perhaps this was what separated him from a significant portion of his contemporaries.

He had understood that the problem was not just "saving the homeland's soil."

After saving the soil, it was necessary to save time.

For this reason, the Republic is not just a new form of state.

It is Turkey's attempt to connect to the new world system formed after the Industrial Revolution.

If you read the Alphabet Revolution only as a change of alphabet, you will not understand it.

If you read the Law on Unification of Education only as an educational regulation, you will not understand it.

If you read the Civil Code only as a legal reform, you will not understand it.

If you read the participation of women in public life only as a matter of social rights, it will still be incomplete.

All of these are different solutions to the same engineering problem:

Building a new load-bearing system that can withstand the dynamic loads created by the changing world.

This is what Atatürk did.

He did not try to strengthen the old structure a little.

He changed the load-bearing system.

Because in some structures, you do not just plaster over the cracks.

You replace the column.

In others, you redesign the building.

Of course, not everything the Republic did was flawless.

No historical transformation is flawless.

When viewed with today's values, there are practices to be criticized, as well as unfinished projects.

But history judges people more by their results than by their intentions.

And in the end, the Republic of Turkey, which emerged from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, managed to remain among the world's major economies despite all its structural problems.

It would be unfair to the science of history to attribute this success only to Atatürk.

But it would also be unfair to history to leave Atatürk out of this result.

Today, we are in the fourth industrial revolution.

Artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, big data, and automation are creating a new shift in the center.

Just as the steam engine did two hundred years ago.

Once again, the world's center of gravity and its center of attraction are moving away from each other.

Once again, the moment is growing.