History, nostalgia, and Turkish politics

A few weeks back, I heard something that seemed completely laughable to me. ''Ataturk didn't die of cirrhosis of the liver.'' Well, he did. Every Turkish schoolkid learns this; it's well-established historical fact. It's also one of the few signs of his personal weakness that is accepted here in Turkey.

It was strange to hear a Turk claim otherwise. I couldn't understand why this guy would insist that everyone--Ataturk's contemporaries, historians, the Turkish Ministry of Education--was wrong. But then I realized something. The day before, I had asked this same man if he thought Ataturk made any mistakes, and after thinking for a minute, he said no, he couldn't think of any. So I realized this: if Ataturk died of cirrhosis of the liver, that might mean he was a bit of a drunkard. And that would upset the whole idea of Ataturk the infallible, Ataturk the demigod.

Inconvenient facts are ignored, or often denied outright in Turkey. ''Ataturk died after he was given a faulty injection by his physician, which mimicked the symptoms of cirrhosis of the liver. Enemies of Turkey (both internal and external) have plotted to discredit Ataturk by slandering him as an alcoholic.'' This is completely baseless. There's nothing in the historical record to support any of this. But it hardly matters--those pesky foreign plotters have clearly mucked about in the records. And if I insist that all of this sounds preposterous, I have either been convinced by the plot, or worse, I am actually part if it. (Seriously.) It is like me claiming that Lincoln was actually killed by French businessmen disappointed that the South had been defeated in the Civil War.

I've gotten used to hearing all kinds of outrageous stuff when I talk about history and politics with Turks. At first, I tried to push back and argue on the side of truth--but I've realized that's kind of pointless and potentially dangerous. As a foreigner, my intransigence is tolerated by most, but I hardly want to come home with a broken nose because I've been criticizing sacred cows.

In Turkey, history is interpreted to support both individual and state purposes. People go hunting through records to find facts that support their political beliefs, ignoring those that don't fit into their world view. Of course, governments all around the world do this--we call it victor's history. What makes Turkey somewhat unique is that individuals do the same.

The story I've told about the end of Ataturk's life is a good example of of this. The official story admits that he died of cirrhosis, but makes no mention of the alcoholism that caused this. (I suppose the Ministry of Education just hopes students won't look up ''cirrhosis'' in an encyclopedia to find out what causes it.) No one could criticize Turkish schools for not teaching the truth, but the unsettling conclusion that Ataturk was probably drunk a bit in his later years--when he was making some really important decisions--is left out of the textbooks.

One of the big goals of my trip is to better understand how history impacts understanding of current politics. It's difficult to sum up what I've learned, but I think it's fair to say that much of Turkey's political discourse--particularly that of the right--is driven by a nostalgia for a ''golden age'' that never existed. (I should pause here to give credit to Esra Ozyurek, the author of ''Nostalgia for the Modern'' and ''The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey'' which I read before I arrived here. Her books got me thinking about all this, and influenced my own thinking quite a bit.) Ataturk, of course, was never drunk during that long-lost ''golden age.''

The official history of Turkey says that the country rallied around one man--Mustafa Kemal Ataturk--to defeat Turkey's foreign opponents and start the process of modernizing the country. The years after 1923 are portrayed as difficult, but as a time when the new nation was united and nearly everyone agreed with Ataturk.

This ignores the significant opposition modernizers faced, both from ethnic minorities (particularly the Kurds), the religious establishment, and supporters of the ancien regime. Ataturk and his allies suppressed dissent with brutal tactics--while the oppression never reached the levels seen in other emerging states, it was hardly a period that could be called ''free'' or ''democratic.'' Early Turkey was an authoritarian, modernizing state with little tolerance for dissent.

I've begun to believe that this authoritarian period was necessary to jump start modernization in Turkey. Some of Ataturk's reforms were extremely unpopular but clearly necessary. No democracy could have adopted an entirely different legal system or changed the alphabet as Turkey did--the population simply didn't support such revolutionary change.

However, by portraying this un-democratic period as one of near-universal agreement and national unity (instead of as a necessary but regrettable period), Turkey has created a strange national longing for a time that never existed. Modern Turkey is indisputably more ''European'' than the Turkey of the 1920's and `30's, but many Turks do not see it that way. Yes, they admit, Turkey is physically modern, but Turks were more forward-looking in those early days. I seriously doubt it.

How does this bizarre retelling of history benefit the state? Simple. By convincing Turks that ''we were once all united,'' people begin to think that it can be done again.

Why should Turks be divided today if they were united 80 years ago? Well, they weren't. Modern Turkey's divisions have always existed, but they were suppressed in the past and are ignored today. This nonexistent period of unity makes people ask questions like this: ''Why are the Kurds unhappy today when they too loved Turkey in the early days?'' Well, the Kurds didn't love Turkey even then. But nobody learns that.

The final draft of official history has yet to be written. Just last week, the Ministry of Education announced all mentions of the 1980 military coup would be removed from the grade eight curriculum because ''it present an image contrary to the democratic nature of the Turkish Republic.''

To paraphrase MC Hammer, stop and listen.

Teaching about a military coup might make students think that Turkey's nature has not always been so democratic? Well, duh. The very fact that there was a coup in 1980 (and in 1960 and `71, plus a bunch of other quasi-coups, most recently in 1997), indicates quite clearly that Turkey has not always been so democratic. But the state wishes its citizens to believe otherwise, and so it will be taught.

This is kind of like the U.S. saying that we won't teach about segregation and Jim Crow anymore because we don't want students to think that there were ever racists in our country. It is a sinister attempt to change the past by ignoring it.

But there is hope.Turkey's youth seems less willing to believe the what they're told than past generations. A healthy dose of disbelief would be a good thing for this country.