Kemalism

Uh, when we think about the, the Kurdish society, how their, uh, rebels or the relationship with the Ottomans and the Turks or the Iranian, m- m- many of the historian from the West or especially from the T- Turkish historian who really like rely on the like official history, they portrayed the Kurds as a like just a tribal sectarian, you know, the religious community.

But when we look at the, how the Ottoman's relation with the Kurds and later like during the World War I, like with the Kemalists and then like the new republic, how they organized the, the Kurds and then what was their relationship, we see that like southern border and then eastern border like protected by the, the Kurds, the Kurdish tribes.

They were not organized by the state.

They were not organized by the any ordinary armies.

In fact, all MPs of Yeni Party walked out during the President's speech.

The Kemalist opposition paper Cumhuriyet's headline tells you their reasoning.

We don't listen to those who stage coups.

The paper quotes Yeni Party leader Özgür Özel.

The Turkish foreign policy changed with the Erdogan government, the AKP government quite strongly.

But initially, it was more like a romantic approach towards the Middle East because Turkey The Kemalist doctrine of Turkey had foreseen just to ignore what happens in the Arab world and to not meddle into the affairs of the Arabs and to stay out of it.

So the Turkish security architecture was always trying to stay away from the Middle East.

But that changed and...

They wanted Mosul, which is now part of Iraq.

And that is what is happening now to jump ahead, is that President Erdogan has recast Kemalism or the idea that Turkish nationalism must be secular.

It was always secular, but a secular nationalism linked to the fact that the Turks were Muslim.

And so it was natural that that could be turned into a religious nationalism, which is exactly what's happened with an Islamist version of Turkish nationalism, which is Erdoganism.

This is a very crucial question, I think, Giota, and thank you for asking that.

The main problem for the Young Turks and for the Kemalists was that they did not have a Turkish nation or-- I mean, there were, of course, Turkish groups, people who were identifying as Turks back then, a hundred years ago, but they did not constitute the majority of the population of Anatolia and of Pontus.

And they were trying-- They tried for several decades in the nineteenth century to somehow assimilate the non-Muslim populations, either by converting them to Islam or by creating a more soft, let's say, ethnic identity to other, to other groups, non-Turkish groups, so that they would be later assimilated more easily.

They did not manage to do that.

And let's ask the question: Who are the people who actually cultivate the sense of difference and the sense of cultural belonging and ethnic identity among a group of people? It is the intellectuals, the musicians, the priests, the leadership of the church that cultivates the belief that, you know, you are a Christian, you are Greek Christian of Pontus.

So it is a network of people, the teachers who teach the Greek language, the Greek history, et cetera, et cetera.

So in the context of trying to assimilate and erase the presence of the Greek population from Pontus, the Young Turks, uh, movement and the Kemalists primarily targeted the intellectuals, the teachers and the priests.

But let me add that they also targeted the women purposefully, Greek women, because w-women are those who reproduce the community.

Something similar happened in Turkey.

If you remember how when Erdogan won elections, it was considered something positive by the West, not only by the West, but also some forces inside Turkey, some liberal and democratic forces in Turkey, because the Kemalists were ruling the country for decades and they were not always very democratic.

But now we see that these forces can use democratic instruments and then little by little destroy these democratic instruments and it reminds me that the behavior how can we we can oppose these tendencies is you know these theories of fighting or frontline democracies you know that we saw since these Romanian elections last year when the new elections were organized after the victory of pro-Kremlin forces with not very legal means.

We saw also how the Armenian pro-Western government of Pashinyan won elections.

All they have to do is take out Erdogan, and then the prophecies will be fulfilled.

Kemalists will come to power, and then things will go disastrously from there because Erdogan is the only, you know, civilizational leader, I think, that is capable of managing the secular Islamic transcontinental state that is Turkey.

And Turkey is the bridge that will connect these two fronts in the world war, Russia, Ukraine, and the Middle East front.

And of course, we know that Constantinople will ultimately be taken by the Russians, given back to the Greeks.