Attilâ İlhan is 100 years old

“The Captain” Attilâ İlhan was laid to rest 20 years ago. Yet, he lives among us at 100 years old through his qualities as a poet, writer, thinker, journalist, screenwriter, and critic.

If you allow me, before I delve into Attilâ İlhan’s world of thought, I would like to share a memory that I am honored to have in my life.

I first met Attilâ İlhan during my university years through the “Demokrat İzmir Gazetesi”, like every young person from İzmir who was searching for the truth on the basis of nationalistic leftism. Later, I became addicted to all his novels and books, starting with his book “Hangi Sol” (Which Left).

After his tenure as editor-in-chief at Demokrat İzmir Gazetesi, Attilâ İlhan played an increasingly dominant role in the world of thought. We wanted to honor this quality of his by having Ege University award him an honorary doctorate, with a group of our academic friends, including Prof. Dr. Ercan Kızılay.

We presented our proposal in 2004 to the then-Rector of Ege University, Prof. Dr. Ülkü Bayındır.

Bayındır welcomed our request with pleasure, and I called Attilâ İlhan that night.

At first, he showed humility and did not accept my proposal.

Later, I involved Professor Erol Manisalı, and he gave a positive response to the proposal I conveyed through him. My friend Hüseyin Yurttaş also wrote about the details of the event in one of his works.

At the ceremony where he received his honorary doctorate from Ege University in 2004, Attilâ İlhan ended his speech by saying, “The password is the Homeland, the sign is Honor.”

In the days we are living in, he reminded us that every citizen in Turkey has a duty to protect these two.

What Kind of Person Was Attilâ İlhan?

Attilâ İlhan was a poet, writer, thinker, journalist, screenwriter, and critic. In terms of his poetry, he was a master not only of his own era but also of today’s poets. Literary critics state that he highlighted his romantic personality as much as possible within the structure of his revolutionary self. For example, in a line from “Üçüncü Şahsın Şiiri” (Poem of the Third Person), he said: “When your eyes touched mine / it would be my disaster, I would cry / I knew you didn’t love me / I heard you had someone you loved / Life ends, the poem does not end, the revolution continues, friendships do not run out.”

We could list these features by adding more.

However, beyond all of this, he was a man of ideas and action. From here, while examining Attilâ İlhan’s identity and ideology, two words stand out.

He was a socialist and a Kemalist

He said, “The interpretations a socialist will make by applying the Marxist method to their own national conditions are important. This cannot be done with information taken from the right or the left. They must find the formula that their people will accept. Every nation must produce its own socialism. Later, an agreement between socialisms, perhaps an international socialism, can be reached” (1) and added: “A socialism based on the principle of free and equal partnership of producers is mandatory. This socialism will be humane and libertarian” (2).

After his book “Hangi Sol”, where he essentially wrote these things, Attilâ İlhan was subjected to intense criticism by pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese socialist approaches. However, time proved Attilâ İlhan right.

Attilâ İlhan said, “For socialism, it is necessary to establish contact with the working class and those who live by their labor, but right now, most importantly, there is a necessity to cooperate with everyone who upholds the main principles of the Kemalist Revolution and to achieve full independence. This is the first task” and added:

“What is very clear now is what the dominant contradiction is. The dominant contradiction is between the oppressed and the oppressors, that is, between the peoples crushed by imperialism and the imperialists. Right now, in a social sense, the contradiction is not between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Why is it not? The Western proletariat, by cooperating with the Western bourgeoisie, is robbing the Eastern peoples. The Western worker also gains from the robbery. When the dominant contradiction is this, it is very clear where we will stand. The Kemalist, the socialist, the liberal, and the Turkist must all be here” (1).

Was the Ideological Basis of Attilâ İlhan’s Stance Against Imperialism Nourished by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev?

As much as his socialism, another identity of Attilâ İlhan that emerged more effectively in front of the masses in recent years was his “Anti-Imperialist Identity,” which is a component of Kemalism.

We know that the ideological basis of Attilâ İlhan’s stance against imperialism was nourished by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev.

In this sense, the first intellectual in Turkey to draw attention to the similarity between the theses of the Anatolian revolution and the Galiev theses was Attilâ İlhan.

Regarding Sultan-Galiev, Attilâ İlhan said, “Galiev was a Soviet revolutionary of Turkish origin who reconciled Marxism with nationalism” (3).

We know that Galiev had the foresight that “…There is no good to come from the Western proletariat. The revolution will definitely come from the oppressed countries, that is, from the Eastern countries that have been reduced to a semi-colonial or colonial status” (4; 5).

According to Attilâ İlhan, what Mustafa Kemal Atatürk said is no different. He says that Atatürk expressed these views more poetically, as in his words: “…Look at the sun that is about to rise from the East. Just as I see the day dawning today, I see the awakening of all Eastern nations from afar. There are many brother nations that will attain their independence and freedom.”

Has the past 20th century not been the century of this truth? Did China, India, Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria, and Tunisia not emerge in this sense after the wars of liberation that the underdeveloped fought against imperialism?

An approach that Attilâ İlhan prioritized in his stance against imperialism was that he never approved of separatism and ethnicism.

Attilâ İlhan was a Kemalist.

However, his interpretation and perception of Kemalism were also quite different. Here, he opposed the Westerners who saw Atatürkism as a continuation of the Tanzimat progressivism and always said that Atatürk was not Westernist but in favor of modernity (6). He saw the Westernization approach as Eurocentric racism. In this sense, he questioned what the perspective on the West should be, suggested that the West should be viewed with reason, and said, “…What is universal in the West is the method; Method means science, it means scientific thought. There is no Eastern or Western science” (7).

Attilâ İlhan said he was an Eastern intellectual. However, he did not perceive being Eastern as upholding the traditional ummah culture; he envisioned a secular and democratic national composition built upon the Seljuk and Ottoman culture.

In this sense, just as he opposed Islamist sects, he opposed foreign schools and missionary activities, which he accepted as bridgeheads of imperialism and Christianity.

Parallel to this, against the collaborationist, secular, and bureaucratic views that tried to limit Atatürkism to secularism, he defended an Atatürkism that revealed its populist, statist, and revolutionary essence.

Attilâ İlhan said, “.. To be modern and national means to be a revolutionary, not a reformist. That is, for the nation to produce its contemporary cultural synthesis in its own nationality, and moreover, to do it by relying only and solely on its own power.” In summary, he said, “Instead of Westernization or traditionalism, modernity and nationality” (7).

Attilâ İlhan also questions the intellectual identity here. According to him, “…The primary duty of a contemporary intellectual is to question the healthy suspicion, that is, the question marks of reason, against the believers on the right and the left! If they do not do this, even if they say they are at the most advanced end of the left, it means they are spinning their wheels in underdevelopment. Because progressivism is not a matter of faith, it is a matter of consciousness. That is, it is a method.”

Attilâ İlhan explains that some who posed as intellectuals on the left and right in Turkey in the past had faith in one of two idols - the United States and the Soviet Union - and in his work “Dönek Bereketi” (The Abundance of Turncoats), he explains how some who had faith in the Soviet Union changed sides today and have faith in the West (9).

Attilâ İlhan links the origin of the Westernist intellectual type to the “education policies” implemented during the İnönü period, which he equates with Tanzimat progressivism.

He states that İnönü moved away from the search for a national culture that Atatürk was trying to create and says: “…In 1940, a return was made to the Greco-Latin foundation. It was very well hidden that this meant Tanzimatism, it was presented as a great progressivism, and from 1941 onwards, national education was stripped of being national. At the same time, both religious education was given an opportunity, and foreign schools began to sprout like weeds all over the country again. The Cold War put the icing on the cake. Because Turkey being theoretically alone after the Second World War terrified those at that time, they threw themselves completely into the arms of the Anglo-Saxons. What happened? Towards the 1960s, Turkey began to raise comprador-type intellectuals, comprador-type merchants, and comprador-type industrialists again, just as it had in the past.”

Attilâ İlhan envisions that education and training, which have lost their nationality, must be nationalized again to prevent the raising of comprador-type intellectuals, and says, “…First of all, foreign schools must be eliminated. State schools that provide education in foreign languages must also be closed. Let them teach foreign languages, but let them teach them in other ways” (8).

Attilâ İlhan was a master of dialectics who expressed that comprador culture stems from comprador economy

He says, “…The Turkish economy has turned into a comprador economy through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank under the control of the United States and the European Union. And the one leading the comprador economy is TÜSİAD,” and adds;

“…We must definitely eliminate the disgrace of establishing a Customs Union with the EU. There is no difference between this agreement and the Trade Treaty we made with the British in 1838. It is necessary to take commercial and economic measures against the EU. Our economy is not an agency economy. Our economy is a national, self-creating economy. Mustafa Kemal Pasha created Etibank and Sümerbank. We were building our own industry. Now those industries, those factories are being taken from our hands. …Compradorship is, in reality, an agency logic dominating everything in a country on the path to colonization. That is, nothing national remains there. Everything that is national is pushed to the background. The foreigner’s value measurements prevail. You act as their agent. It has been like this from literature to politics, from economy to science” (8).

Attilâ İlhan constantly repeated, wrote, and said that the negativities experienced at the beginning of the 21st century, just like at the beginning of the 20th century, stemmed from capitalist imperialism. In this context, he says in his book “Hangi Küreselleşme” (Which Globalization): “Globalization is a new system designed for large international companies to exploit the world nicely” (10).

İlhan was also the first writer to express that the political regime the West tailored for Turkey in the context of globalization policies was moderate Islam (11).

He stated that with this ideology, the West aimed to gain easier control over the Turkish economy by reviving the feudal-ummah culture. He wrote, “This is where the idea of giving a green light to moderate Islam, the wisdom of which our Westernized-arabesque liberals cannot understand, comes from” (10).

Attilâ İlhan was, above all, a socialist and a Kemalist, as I tried to say at the beginning. In this context, he opposed globalization, the new face of imperialism. He never lost hope in his writings and interviews. He stated that it is possible to resist imperialism and their collaborators. To achieve this, he expressed that everyone who considers themselves a citizen and wants to live independently in this country must be on the same side.

Did these approaches of Attilâ İlhan find enough resonance in our society? Looking at the number and identities of the people who attended his funeral, we can easily say that this resonance emerged. Our people were like an indicator of the deep wave he expressed.

The moment came, and Attilâ İlhan, who said “The password is the homeland, the sign is honor,” also died. Protecting his memory is protecting Turkey and the Republic. For this reason, Attilâ İlhan will always live.

References

1. İlhan, A., 2001. Vatan Ve Namus (Homeland and Honor), İleri, Issue 2, January-February.

2. İlhan, A., 1970. Hangi Sol (Which Left) (Memories and Pains) Varlık Yayınları.

3. İlhan, A., 2000. Sultan Galiyev Avrasya’da Dolaşan Hayalet (Sultan-Galiev, The Ghost Wandering in Eurasia), Cumhuriyet Söyleşileri (Cumhuriyet Interviews), Bilgi Yayınevi.

4. Kakınç, H., 2004. Sultan Galiyev ve Milli Komünizm (Sultan-Galiev and National Communism), Bulut Yayınları.

5. Kakınç, H., 2004. Destansı Kuramcı Sultan Galiyev (Korumlu Külliyat) (Epic Theorist Sultan-Galiev (Protected Corpus)), Bulut Yayınları.

6. İlhan, A., 1995. Hangi Atatürk (Which Atatürk) (Memories and Pains) Bilgi Yayınevi.

7. İlhan, A., 1995. Hangi Laiklik (Which Secularism) (Memories and Pains) Bilgi Yayınevi.

8. İlhan, A., 2002. Uşaklığın Zirvesindeki Komprator Aydınlar (Comprador Intellectuals at the Peak of Servitude), İleri, Issue 9, March-April.

9. İlhan, A., 2002. Dönek Bereketi (The Abundance of Turncoats), Cumhuriyet Söyleşileri (Cumhuriyet Interviews), Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları.

10. İlhan, A., 1997. Hangi Küreselleşme (Which Globalization), Bilgi Yayınevi.

11. İlhan, A., 1998. “..Bir Sap Kırmızı Karanfil” (..A Stem of Red Carnation), Cumhuriyet Söyleşileri 1 (Cumhuriyet Interviews 1), Bilgi Yayınevi.