November 21, 2023 • 61 mins
The Father of All Turks, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was a revolutionary, a hardcore military commander, a bulwark against Fascism, a reformer, a humanitarian, and a man who worked to rebuild bridges with the peoples he had warred against. The United Nations declared him a humanitarian hero, the Australians built a statue for him even though he'd fought against them in war, and it's actually illegal in Turkiye to say anything bad about him in public. Not just anybody gets that sort of treatment.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bad Ass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced
by High five Content April twenty fifth, nineteen fifteen. From
a fortified position above the Gallipoli Peninsula, atop the shores
of Cape Hellas, the men of the Ottoman Empire's fifty
seventh Regiment can see the enemy approaching. The once tranquil
(00:25):
blue waters are littered with the gray hulls of steel warships,
their thunderous cannons aimed at the ridge line. The pristine
white sand beaches are swarming with enemy troops clamoring from
landing craft streaming up the slopes as far as the
eye can see in either direction. The fifty seventh Regiment
(00:47):
is exhausted. They're outnumbered, they're surrounded, and now they're almost
entirely out of ammunition. But this is their homeland. They
aren't going to give it up without a fight. Their
command surveys the scene. He wears a khaki uniform, a
steel helmet, a serious looking mustache, and the rank insignia
(01:08):
of a lieutenant colonel. He is a man from a
different time, a warrior who would have fit in as
well leading Sipahi horsemen into battle on the steps as
he does commanding the exhausted riflemen in this trench before him.
He gathers his surviving soldiers, anyone able to stand, rises
and draws close. He looks at them solemnly surveys their faces.
(01:34):
Each of these men is dear to him. Each of
their deaths will be meaningful. He orders them to fix bayonets.
Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kamal knows that reinforcements won't arrive in
time to save his men, but maybe their sacrifice can
(01:54):
buy the army sometime. I am not ordering you to attack,
he says to his men, drawing a long curved sword
from the scabbard at his hip. I am ordering you
to die. Then he climbs from the safety of his dugout,
points his blade at the enemy, and charges his men
(02:17):
follow with him. Hello, and welcome back to Badass of
the Week. My name is Ben Thompson and I am
here as always with my co host doctor Pat Larish. Pat,
how are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I'm doing okay, beIN and I'm excited to be here
with our Badass listeners.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yes, and we're excited to talk about somebody who is
very central to a country that has recently changed its name,
and I am going to try very intensely to use
the correct name of the country, but I'm not entirely
certain of the pronunciation yet. So it's Turkeia, right.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, yeah, it's Turkeia. So you to be spelled Turkey
like the Thanksgiving bird, and it's actually Turkya. T you
with what looks like an umlaut. I think they probably
have a different name for it, kiye, and just call
it Turkya, like Turkey with a yeah at the end Turkey.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
I think I can mand with this. Yeah, the umlauts
are like a little intimidating.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
They're just little Turkya.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Okay, well I will I will endeavor to use Turkeya, Turkia, Turkya, Turkya.
I will endeavor to use Turkya. So Turkya is having
a big year. They are celebrating their one hundredth year
as a republic October twenty ninth. Yeah, twenty twenty three
was the one hundredth year as a republic. And I
(03:51):
have written about many turk heroes over my years of
running Badass of the Week, and it's really fun to
do that because I get a lot of great feedback
from Turkish people. Who love it when I write about
the Turks, Like for me, the Turks and the Polls,
the Polish, they're always happy when I write about their
(04:12):
countries because they're two countries with these really great military traditions,
these badass heroes, these that dominated Europe. Both these countries
were dominant super military powers. Yet they always kind of
they kind of get a bad rap today and they
don't get talked about as these military powers that they
(04:33):
traditionally have been.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, and with the Ottomans, especially with the episodes that
we've done to date on our podcast, it's not so
much that they're losing necessarily, but that in the stories
that we choose to tell, they're presented as the bad guys,
or at least the antagonists. You know, we have lad
the Impaler going against the Ottoman Empire. We have Laskarina
Boobolina going against the Ottoman Empire. But what are things
(04:58):
like from a point of view of the Turks. We've
got a rich civilization, surely we must have a badass
or two and they're somewhere obviously.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, exactly right. The thing I like to talk about
with the Turks is that the national hero of every
country in Eastern Europe is the national hero of that
country because he defeated the Turks, you know, so like,
there's got to be something happening here on the other side.
Let's talk about some badass Turks. And they have great names.
That's the thing I love about Turkish heroes is they
(05:28):
have these great epithets. Right, we've Glad the Impaler is cool,
but they have sell Him, the Grim, Beyazid, the Thunderbolt,
med the Conqueror, Suliman and the Magnificent. You have all
these awesome, you know, epithets that you're like, all right,
sale him the Grim. I'm in like, well, he's badass,
all right. I don't even know anything about the guy,
but I could picture him and he's badass. But then
(05:49):
every time I post a story about a Turkish hero
or would you know. But then when I would post
these stories of these Turkish heroes, every time I I
would write the article, I would get a lot of
email from the from people in turkeya and they would say, hey,
you know, this guy's great, thanks for writing about him,
Thanks for you know, making us sound good for once,
because there's not a lot of that in the West.
(06:11):
But you're missing, like the biggest badass in our country's history.
So we gotta we gotta talk about talk about this guy.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, we definitely do yep, So let's do it. Who
is the Turk of all Turks?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yes, the Turk of all Turks, the father of all Turks,
the national hero of Turkey literally not literally, no, they
actually existed as people before him, however, not in.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Their current metaphorically figuratively, symbolically the father of Turks.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yes, yeah, and his name means that what he is
known as today is at A Turk, and that means
the father of all Turks. He is a guy who
is you know, beloved by the people of Turkia and
has been respected by the people he has fought against
in war generally, and that takes a lot. That takes
(07:02):
a lot. It is a hard line to walk of,
like respected by your enemies and loved by your people.
In fact, like in nineteen eighty one, on the anniversary
of Ata Turk's death, the United Nations actually declared nineteen
eighty one the at A Turk Year of the World
as a testament to at A Turk's abilities to quote
(07:25):
promote world peace, international understanding, and respect for human rights.
It's actually illegal to insult him in public in Turkia,
and like, yes, there's like probably some kind of fine
associated with a beating, but you actually probably just get
your ass kicked by the Turks who carried and don't
like you saying that.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, like you insulted my symbolic dad.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yes, yeah, would you say about my mama? Like, I'm.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
So tell us about this guy?
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, So I'm gonna open with a quote about him.
The quote is by a guy named Noel Barber, who
was a British journalist and novelist, and he traveled to
all these exotic countries. He reported from Morocco, where he
was stabbed five times. Apparently he got shot in the
head during the Hungarian Revolution. He got in a car
(08:15):
accident later that year, then became a bestselling novelist while
he was in his seventies.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
So I don't know, ooh hey yeah yeah, yeah, okay,
So I like the way you slid an extra bonus
badass into our episode.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, no kidding, I had no idea who okay, this
guy would.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Know this badass Noel Barber is writing about at a
Turk What does badass? Nos badass? What does Noel Barber
say about at a Turk.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
So he says, a man born out of due season
and anachronism, a throwback to the Tatars of the steps,
a fierce elemental force of a man with his military
genius and his ruthless determination. In a different age, he
might well have been a Genghis Khan conquering empires. And
when you see this guy in picture, that's what he
(09:00):
looks like. He's he's even wearing the hat.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Yeah, yeah, hats are important in this episode.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, there's gonna be a whole bunch of stuff about
hats in this episode. Anyway, stay tuned and we'll be
right back and we'll get into it. All right, welcome back.
We are going to talk about Mustafa Kamal at a Turk.
(09:27):
So the story of Ata Turk begins in eighteen eighty
one with the birth of a kid named Mustafa. It
might be kind of ironic now, but the future father
of all Turks was born in what is now present
day Thessaloniki, Greece, though at the time it was called
Salonica and it was part of the Ottoman Empire. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, the Turks liked to or the Ottoman Empire liked
to put their own names on places. And yeah, so Greece,
as listeners who listened to our last Koreena Boobolina episode
know part of the Ottoman Empire, and the Greeks were
maybe a little salty about that. We've got a lot
of stuff going on. And in eighteen eighty one, Mustafa Kamal.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Was born Mustafa. He goes to military school in Istanbul,
not Constantinople. Correct, So Musafa goes to military school in Istanbul.
He graduates as a lieutenant in nineteen oh five, and
everybody kind of knew that this guy was going to
be big time even when he was at military school.
(10:30):
His instructors nicknamed him Kamal, which is the Turkish word
for perfection. Which, yeah, that's a pretty big deal. I think.
I don't think it's every day that your drill instructor
calls you, like Mustafa perfection, right.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Yeah, yeah. I have to say, as a teacher, I
have mixed feelings about this, Like if I started nicknaming
my students, I don't think it would go well for
anyone involved. But anyway, but a different time, different places,
you know, different different mores. So yeah, so he gets
named come Al, he gets named perfection, which is kind
of nice, pretty good, and I'm assuming this means that
(11:04):
they think highly of him.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yes, and so he joins a political party called the
Young Turks. It's kind of a so right now we
are in the ending days of the Ottoman Empire and
the Young Turks. It's more than just a top twenty
five Rod Stewart song from the eighties. It is kind
of a political party that is kind of is interested
(11:28):
in reforming the Ottoman Empire. They had been sultans for
hundreds of years and they were looking and it's not
working out great for Turki at the time for the
Ottoman Empire.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Turkya kind of has a reputation in Europe as being
quote the old man of Europe, Yeah, which is kind
of agist, but letting you know that the standing of
the Ottoman Empire is like mh.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, I mean in nineteen oh five, we are people
are using rifles and canons and machine guns exist and
all of this stuff is happening and and the Turks
are still you know, they still have a sultan. In
a lot of ways, they're kind of still in this
Middle Ages time period where they were, uh, this world,
this world power very dominant world power, but they haven't
(12:17):
kind of updated with the times, and these young Turks
are kind of this new generation of guys who are like, look,
we aren't going to survive with the old way of things.
The world has changed, the industrial the Industrial Revolution has happened.
We need to catch up or we're gonna we're gonna
we're gonna get destroyed.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Yeah, get with the program.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
H And okay, great, you know, reform sounds good. Let's
let's have democracy instead of a sultan and all of
this stuff. But you know, the Sultan doesn't like that.
The Sultan tries to get Kamal dishonorably discharged and summarily
executed for treason, but it doesn't happen because the young
Turks actually do end up gaining a lot of political power,
(12:59):
and you know, they don't depose the Sultan, but they
are able to gain enough power that they can protect
their guys.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Okay, okay, great, I mean I bet Mustapha Kamal's mom
was relieved.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Yes, but the Ottoman Empire and the UN trucks are succeeding.
But we're in kind of this. We end up in
this little bit where the young Turks are successful in
beginning to change the way things are being done in
the Ottoman Empire, but the Sultan is still there and
there's a lot of work to be done, and it's
the progress is slow, and the rest of Europe is
(13:32):
on a is on a you know, on a freight
train to World War One.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, and like literally a freight train, because that's the
technology we've got, right, Yeah, So do you want to
do a quick drive by of the Ottoman Empire the
history thereof in context?
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yeah, let's do that. I think it's a good kind
of setup here, because the Ottoman Empire, you know, they've
been around at this point for a seven hundred years
and it's been it's been quite of a journey.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
For them and Ottoman. I mean, some people when they
hear the word Ottoman, they think of a footstool, a
nice poofy footstool that you put your feet up on
after a long day.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
And because I think they admitted it.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Isn't that Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean furniture is
furniture is important. This is important technology for humans anyway.
So the Ottoman Empire was founded in twelve ninety nine
by a guy called Osman and Ottoman is just a
bad European translation of his name. I think this is
what happens when you have Italians trying to fit the
name of Osman into Italian. And the Ottomans are Turkic
(14:34):
people from northwest Anatolia, which is the area that is
now Turkey. They carved some land from the Byzantines, which
was the Greek speaking Eastern Roman Empire, and it grew
into an empire that spanned the Middle East, North Africa,
and even into eastern Europe. You know, if you walk
around Vienna, you will find monuments and buildings that have
(14:58):
some connection with the Turks. But by nineteen oh eight,
you know, we've been an empire for over six hundred years,
and it takes a lot to maintain something. It wasn't
quite what it used to be. And you know, like
I said, it acquired the nickname, which is a really
unfortunate name, the sick Man of Europe. And sorry, I
(15:19):
think earlier I said the old Man of Europe, which
is kind of awful.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Neither of them sounds great, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Yeah, neither of them sounds great. Yeah yeah yeah, the
sick Man of Europe. And it's not intended as a compliment.
Yeah and yeah, I mean, okay, if you have a
sick man, what do you do, you know, you bring
him chicken soup, You send them get well cards.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
It's not if you're not if you're colonial Europe, you know,
you try to take you try to take grease back.
You try to you try to retake Salonika and rename
it the Saloniki. Yeah and yeah, that's what happens, right
that the Ottoman Empire has been making life hard for
Europe for six hundred years, and now that the Ottomans
(15:59):
are down, Europe is up. They are trying to take
land back from the Ottomans, and the Ottoman Empire is
now under attack from all sides by all of its
enemies who are looking to grab land, grab wealth, and
grab territory. So, being a young lieutenant in early nineteen hundreds,
(16:23):
you know, Mustava Camala is in the middle of a
lot of action pretty early on. Right in nineteen eleven,
he ends up in Libya where he's fighting against the
Italians who are trying to take over Libya, and he's
defending to Brook, which is like a fortress town, and
he earns a name for himself. He earns some Medal
for Bravery for leading two hundred guys on a charge
(16:46):
against a hugely larger force of Italians. He takes him
around a flank and you know they quoted as two
hundred guys against two thousand, but he does. Yeah, yeah,
And they always exaggerate this stuf when you do the
battle report, but like, whatever it was, it was very brave.
So he leads this charge out from Toebrook, gets into
(17:08):
their trenches, captures a bunch of their weapons and equipment,
and drives the Italians back. Oh yeah. A year later
he's fighting in the Balkans and he's battling the Greeks,
the Bulgarians, and the Serbians who are all trying to
retake their lands, or what they believe to be their
lands from the Ottoman Empire. You know, we've talked about
(17:30):
all the great heroes of Eastern Europe having fought the
Turk since because the Turks, you know, they took over. Yeah,
they started in Asia Minor and they ended up in
Vienna and warsaw Right and all of that territory in
between is now what like two dozen countries. That kind
of one of those Turks out of there, and so
(17:51):
at a Turk is traveling around and he's fighting in
all of these places. He's battling in North Africa and
Eastern Europe, and he's doing some pretty heavy lifting leading
troops on the front lines. He's in a lot of
combat for three years of battle. So then World War
One gets going in nineteen fourteen, and the Ottoman Empire
(18:16):
is brought into it on the side of Germany and Austria,
Hungary and Italy. Actually, so they're fighting against France and
England and Russia and this big world war. And you know,
we've done a couple of World War One stories and
I'm sure we will do many more.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
But one thing that a lot of American listeners might
not realize is that World War One was also fought
in the Ottoman Empire. In present day Turkey, fighting is
kind of at a stalemate in France with the Germans,
and the Germans will bringing up a good fight, but
the Ottoman Empire, they're the sick man of Europe. You know,
maybe if we can attack into turkeya like we can,
(19:01):
we can wound these guys, we can knock them out
of the fight. We can free up troops elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah, strategically, it sounds like a good plan.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, yeah, and it probably was. The problem is that
they ran into at a Turk.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Oh so it's not named at a Turk yet. But
he's still just what was he like a colonel?
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Lieutenant colonel, tenant colonel, which is lower than a colonel. Okay, yeah, yeah,
so he's not a high ranking officer. He's he's had
a lot of combat experience and he's shown a lot
of bravery and he's been promoted. Yeah, but he, you know,
he's kind of military academy guy, worked his way up.
He's a lieutenant colonel, which is kind of a mid range,
mid range officer, and he is stationed on the shores
(19:45):
of a place called Gallipoli, which is Gallipoly which is
a you know, military history buffs will recognize that name
is one of the more famous, kind of bloodier battles
from World War One, And he was just kind of
positioned in the reserve. He was he was set out
there on a reserve position, and Gallipoli was at a
(20:10):
choke point in the Bosporus, so kind of entry to
the Black Seas.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
If you picture Istunbul on a map, the Bosporus is
that little bit that connects Asia to Europe.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yeah, the Bosporus is important because it connects Yeah, it
connects Asia to Europe. It's it's access to the Mediterranean.
It's the only access to the Mediterranean.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, it's yeah, it's a choke point and yeah, sorry,
I'm picturing it in my head and it's it's right
right there. It's it's actually really thin in.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
A way, yeah, super thin. That was the advantage of
Constantinople is that it held held that position, right, and
so Musava Kamal is close to there, and the Turkish
high command is is not that good, right, the Sultan's guys,
they're not that talented. They're not doing well in the war.
They're getting beat in the Middle East by the Lawrence
(21:05):
of Arabia. Guys, they're they're they're struggling financially and militarily.
And the British Commonwealth sends sixteen divisions of troops, mostly
from Australia, New Zealand and India, but also British as well.
But these Commonwealth troops are going to land on Gallipoli
(21:25):
and they are going and sixteen divisions is a lot
of troops and they are going to try to cut
the Turks off from access to the Mediterranean by taking
this land. And the only guy there, the senior ranking
officer at Gallipoli, when these ships arrive, and he doesn't
have very much notice that they're coming because, like I said,
(21:45):
the logistics is not there for the Ottoman Empire. Yeah,
is Musaf Kamal, and he's got, you know, much much
smaller force and he sees these guys coming and he's like,
all right, we got to dig in. We have to
hold this otherwise we're out of the war. We lose
this battle, we lose the position. The war's over. We're
not supposed to even be like, we weren't supposed to
(22:06):
be dealing with frontline attack, but now we have to ye.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
But here we are yes.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
And so he very famously like gets his guys together
and they're outnumbered by these guys. I mean, making an
amphibious landing is very hard. The you know, they're they're
up on the high ground and these mountains looking down
onto this bay, and the British ships are coming in.
The British Navy is coming in with troop transports full
(22:33):
of Aussie's and Kiwi's, who are two pretty tough characters
to deal with. And these Turks up on the on
the on the mountain range, they're they're outnumbered, they're under equipped,
their their technology is a step below the technology that
the British Commonwealth can present. And you know, Lieutenant Colonel
(22:53):
Mustafa Kamal, he gets his guys together and he says,
all right, we're gonna hold this position. We're gonna dig
in here and we're gonna fight. And uh, you know
the quote that's attributed to him as he says, I'm
not ordering you to attack, I'm ordering you to die.
Like we are going to fight here and we're gonna
hold this line until somebody comes for us. But we aren't.
(23:17):
We aren't getting out of this right. We're not gonna
see tomorrow. We got to stay here and fight these
guys until somebody else gets over here. Because the Turks
weren't ready for this. They were totally caught off guard.
And it's hardcore and he's like, we got to you know,
we can't, we can't give this up. So we'll just
fight here until we die and then that'll give some
more time for the backup to come.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
That's dedication.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Yes, So the battle begins and Camal is his lieutenant
currently He's like, he's not I mean, he's he's two
steps below in general, right, But he is personally leading
these counter attacks. He's the one like, you know, shoot
as much as you can when you run out of bullets,
fix your bayonets, and attack. He is. He's running up
and down the line.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
He's not asking his men to do anything that he
wouldn't do himself.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
No, no, he has no intention of surviving this battle himself. Yeah, right.
He is not leading from the back. He's not even
a level of officer that would generally lead from the
back in this situation either. So he is he is
leading these guys. The British land on. The Commonwealth troops
land on the beach and they're pushing their way up
(24:24):
and the Turks are shooting down at them with machine
guns and artillery and rifles. But it's not enough, and
the Commonwealth starts to get guys on the beach. They
start to bring artillery up, they start to bring heavy
guns up. The Gurkhas, who we are definitely going to
talk about on this show in the future. But these
guys are hard to right. They take over like they
get they charge up the hill and capture one of
(24:45):
these Turkish positions on the ridge line. Mustava Kamal orders
a group of guys to just kind of fix bayonets
and counterattack them hand to hand and was able to
retake that high ground with the basically a suicide charge.
At one point he was running around through the battle
and all the you know, there's gunfire and aircraft and
the British are shooting naval artillery from their warships and stuff.
(25:09):
We're pounding the Turkish positions. He's running around.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
It's not like the Turks have their own airplanes to
respond with.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Right, they do, but not enough. Right, they're out, They're
not not what you need, right, they're under equipped. Yeah,
and the.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Odds are not in our favor here.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
No, no, And so he's running around. At one point
he sees this group of this platoon is like falling
back and he's like, where are you guys falling back?
We got to hold these positions, and they're like, we
don't have any bullets, and he's like, put your bannet
on your rifle and get back over there. And what
happens is like this is it's one of the At
the time, it was the biggest amphibious assault ever undertaken.
(25:50):
It's since been surpassed by D Day, but at the
time nothing was bigger than this uh and Hata Turk
is there and he's holding the line against all these odds.
He's holding the line and there's hundreds of thousands, literally
hundreds of thousands of Commonwealth troops trying to take this
position that he's the commander of. And yeah, like you
(26:12):
talked about leading from the front, his command headquarters was
three hundred yards from the front trenches, which is like
three hundred yards is not that far when you're talking
about World War One artillery or mortars or any of
that kind of thing. And instead of these guys fighting
to the death, they hold it, and more troops show up,
and the Ottomans are able to get reinforcements in there,
(26:34):
and the battle ends up being a victory for the
Ottoman Empire, thanks in no small part dot to most
Ava Kamal and those leadership in those first hours and
days and.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Weeks against really tough odds.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, and outnumbered by extremely well equipped and very competent soldiers.
So he gets promoted to colonel. Of course, he gets
transferred to the caucus where this time he has to
fight another defensive war, except this time he's not on
the beach. He's in the mountains fighting Russians. And then
after that he gets transferred to Syria into the desert
(27:10):
where he's fighting Lawrence of Arabia and some of these
other guys in the in the sands of Arabia. He's
got range, Yeah, he's got range. Like he's been everywhere now,
he's been fighting in Libya, Eastern Europe, on the beach,
and Turkey and everywhere, and he is able to hold
the line against everything they threw against him.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
So yeah, that's most off a Kamal and his military resume.
How's that going for the Ottoman Empire in general?
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Yeah, the you know, Germany's defeated, the Ottoman Empire is defeated.
And there is this Treaty of Versailles that we talk
about all the time whenever we want to bring up
World War two stuff, and you know, the Ottoman Empire
is named in the Versailles Treaty, and it's it's hard.
It's hard on the Turks. It's extremely harsh on the Turks,
and a lot of that territory that the Serbians and
(28:01):
the Greeks and all those other people wanted back. The
Ottoman Empire has to give it up in this treaty.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
But that's not the end of our story.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
It's not the end of our story. It's honestly, it's
kind of the beginning of the story.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Right, So should we take a break and tell the
rest of the story after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
We are at the end of World War One, and
Mustafa Kamal has been this great hero of the Ottoman Empire,
this great warrior, this leader of military forces, who has
won every battle he's fought in and done so heroically
against impossible odds. Yet his country's still lost. And now
(28:50):
he's here with you, all of these very heavy penalties
being levied against the Ottoman Empire in this treaty of
versus that ends World War One, and that's hard for him.
And on top of that, he was a member of
these young Turks who who kind of are trying to
reject the old way of doing things anyway, right, he
(29:14):
doesn't like his bosses and his superiors and his government,
and they've done nothing to support him, and now they've
signed this slame treaty that you know, gives up all
of this territory. There's Greek troops marching through Istanbul. There's
probably some talk of it being renamed Constantinople. Right, this
is unacceptable, Yeah, yeah, So Ustafakemal decides he's not going
(29:38):
to take it. He's not going to abide by the
terms of this treaty, which just seems kind of crazy, right,
it seems really it's a treaty. Come on, a treaty, right,
like we lost the Warrior, we got to do this.
But he's he's not happy with this, and so he
he leaves istan Bull in a boat and he crosses
the Black Sea and he lands in Ankara, the city
(29:59):
of Ankara, and declares an open revolt against the foreign
powers occupying his homeland. He is he's a currentl he's
still not even a general. But he lands there and
he says, I'm not going to take this. I'm going
to fight, I'm going to fight, I'm going to reopen
this war. And who's with me? And it turns out
there's a lot of people that was with him. And
(30:19):
if you ever wonder why Stample is not the capital
of Turkey, and right now, this is why. Because it
was left because he was mad, and he sailed here
and he built a new capital here.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah, and Cara. You know, it's no slouch. It's been
inhabited for millennia. It's going back to well before the
second millennium BCE, and according to some stories, was founded
by King Midas, yes, the Golden Touch guy, but even
before King Midas. Some ancient sources Pausanias for those of
you who are keeping track, say that it was even
(30:50):
older than King Midas. So you know, make of that
what you will. The takeaway is there's been some sort
of human presence around Ankara for a but it really
took off once Mustafa Kamal later known as Ataturk, decided
that the Turks needed a symbolic fresh start, and he
just said, okay, we're moving the capital here.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Yeah, and you know, he basically declares war on the
Anton Powers from World War One, which really doesn't seem
like it'd be a good idea because you know, Germany
was a big help in that war. But you know, weirdly,
like you know, he gets attacked of course immediately by
France and Britain and Greece. They're trying to reach they're
(31:34):
trying to capture in a car. They're trying to get him,
They're trying to get his guys.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
So you mean attacked like like literally physisically.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Attacked, just attacked with words no no, no, guns and
tanks and airplanes and things are coming for him in ships.
But it took He has pretty far from the Commonwealth
and France, and these guys have just suffered very like
badly in the war and they were probably happy to
have it over. The Greeks, the Armenians, the Serbians, they're
(32:02):
very committed because this is their turf and they want
to fight this.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, this is much closer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but their
neighbor exactly.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
But for England and France, it's not you know, it's
not as easy to get troops out there, and there's
some political problems of you know, the people of those
countries being like, hey, I think we've lost enough guys
in World War One, like we're pretty much done with
having a dead Frenchmen and dead Englishmen. And Ata Turk's
able to hold and kara against them and drive them back.
(32:30):
And he's leading troops against the Greeks and the Armenians
and the Serbians and these other Eastern European powers and
he's defeating them and is able to reunify Anatolia, declare
Turkish independence basically from these other countries and basically say
we're not doing this treaty. They fight him and he wins,
(32:54):
and so he's not doing the treaty.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
That's a w Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Now there's a bit of a sticky thing we need
to talk about here involving at a Turk and we
have to mention it, and I think it's it would
be irresponsible not to you. But one thing that is
kind of a sticky question here is the the involvement
of Mustava Camal in what we know as the Armenian genocide, right,
(33:20):
which is a thing that is not talked about very
much in Turkeia, but because.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
I think it's actually some sort of illegal to talk
about it, or it has been illegal. I think you're right,
there's a lot of pressure to not There has been
a lot of pressure to not talk about it, and
I don't know exactly the details, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Yeah, So it creates a bit of a tough thing
for us to deal with here because you know, the
the majority of the atrocities that occurred, and we have
a lot of We have a lot of physical evidence
that really, really bad thing happened to the people of
Armenia at the hands of the Turks and the young Turks,
(34:04):
which was a movement at a Turk was part of,
although he you know, the more I don't even know
how to quantify this, but like the worst bits of
it happened before he was even old enough to be
you know, before he was He's not involved in any
of this. He's not lining people up in the streets
and shooting them, right, He's not doing that kind of stuff.
(34:25):
I don't know. Talking about this is difficult, but so
the greater part of the Armenian genocide happens before at
a Turk's time. But where he gets tied in is
some of the fighting here right at the end of
World War One, where he's trying to retake Turkey from
these foreign powers that have overtaken it. In doing this,
(34:45):
he takes some territory from the Greeks and the Armenians,
and in the process of these fighting, civilians are killed,
and these civilian killings get lumped in with the Armenian jedocide.
It's not a great look for at a.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Turk, but no, it's not a great look whatever, whatever
the reality and whatever the actual involvement, it's not I agree,
it's not a great look.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Yeah. Yeah, So it's kind of a sticky thing where
he gets he gets lumped in there. Uh it's hard man,
because the Armenians they believe that he is part of it, right, Like, yeah,
they really.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
And I understand why, sure, you know, but I also
understand why he's not.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yeah, yeah, he's not.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Depending on how you look at it, right, he's not.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
There for these things that are happening. And there's basically
there's one big city that gets taken and the Greek
and the Armenian quarter gets burned and a lot of
people die. This it's horrible and it's a tragedy and
it's it's a terrible thing that happens to these civilian.
Civilians shouldn't be killed in war. But I think there's
a difference between rounding up all of the Armenians in
(35:49):
town and systematically executing them versus your army captures the
town and a bunch of people die in the process.
So I don't know, I don't know how to talk
about it.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Be that as it may, however you look at it,
it was a great tragedy. Yes, and and so this
is a complication in the figure of at A Turk.
Let's just acknowledge that that's a thing.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean in my reading of him
and my understanding of him at the time and later on,
like this really wasn't his I don't see this as
kind of the black mark that that some people argue
that it is, right, I don't really believe that he was.
He doesn't really strike me as the kind of person that.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
It doesn't jive with some of his progressive and humanitarian
moves later.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah, yeah, it doesn't. And he in later years will
do a lot of work to try to repair these bridges.
You know, some people accept that more than others. But
he does do a lot of work, and he is
you know, it is the United Nations Year of Adit Turk,
because he does spend a lot of time and energy
later on in his career trying to you know, rebuild
(37:05):
relations with the Armenians and the Greeks and other people
that he had been at war with for all of
the history of the Ottoman Empire.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Yeah yeah, okay, well, so that's kind of a somber note.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
But but let's move on.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, let's move on. And when all the dust has settled, yes,
and Turkia is free from European domination, what do things
look like? What are we up to?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Okay, so it's nineteen twenty three now, and sovokamal is
I mean he's basically the George Washington of TURKEYA. Right
he actually, yeah, he is right. And he gets elected. Yeah, yeah,
he gets elected the first president of democratic Turkeia. Like,
they overthrow the soulson and they abolish the sultanate. The Sultan,
(38:01):
the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, walks out of
the palace and there's a photo of him getting in
a car and driving away, and that's the end of
the Sultans. They're gone. There, they've been voted out, and
now there's the democracy in TURKEYA and at a Turk
is selected the first president of Turkia. And he is
at the time forty two years old. So he's I
don't know what my age, I think, which is kind
(38:22):
of depressing to think about.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
No no, no, no no no no. No. Numbers are arbitrary,
that's yeah. Yeah, so maybe he's forty two, like base
twelve or something.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Well, he he sets up a secular, non religious affiliated
democracy and spends the next decade trying to modernize that
country through like three hundred years of modernization, which he
is able to do remarkably effectively. He institutes these sweeping
(38:54):
legal changes, puts in mandatory education, abolishes laws that deny
freedom in a quality to women, and he does a
lot of things to kind of bring the Ottoman Empire
into or now Turkia, into the modern.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
World in Ata Turk's mind, in Mustafa Kamal's mind, a
lot of what meant the modern world was European. The
Ottoman Empire had been using the Arabic script, the Arabic
alphabet to write Turkish language documents, but Kamal changes this
(39:29):
to the Latin script. So you know the alphabet that
we used to write English, and okay, you had to
add a few letters with little dots over them because
you had to represent Turkish pronunciation. But it's like, bam, okay, hey,
you just need to learn a new alphabet. And he also,
and I'm recording this, you know, Ben, you and I
are recording this. A few days after we changed to
(39:52):
we only change from daylight saving time to standard time.
And that's only one hour of time difference. But there
were in the early twentieth century, Like I think, maybe
I don't know, six different ways of telling the date
the day and date and year in Turkey. Kamal says, okay, a,
(40:15):
this is ridiculous. You need a higher degree in mathematics
to figure out what day is a week it is.
And also, hey, let's just streamline this and let's be
all like modern, which means okay, yeah, it means European.
So one of if you actually look up the term
roomy calendar are um i calendar, you will find images
(40:39):
of a calendar page that has like so many different
ways of telling the date, and you might find like
April twenty fifth actually corresponds to I'm just making this up,
like May eighth. You've got the difference between the Gregorian
and the Julian calendar. You've got the difference between the
Islamic and the generally Christian calendar. And so at Turk says, okay,
(41:01):
I'm calling him at a Turk. I forget when exactly
he gets the name at a trick, but anyway, our
guy Mustafakamal. He cuts through the Gordian knot of calendars,
and he says, Okay, we're just going to do this
European style and he waves his magic wand or whatever
the I don't know, whatever legislative or executive thing he has.
(41:23):
So basically, anyone who has been telling time or telling
the date by the Islamic calendar, which would have been
the year would have been thirteen hundred something.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Oh, because even the years are different.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, crazy.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
It's all like think of like the earth is five
thousand years old or whatever, and the Muslims still time
by Mohammed and the Christian sellate by a by Jesus Christ.
Oh wow, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
So you've got all of a sudden bam, we're like
almost like I don't know, six hundred years.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Well, the Julian and the Gregorian calendar is the thing
we were talking about earlier. It's like how how Russia
was on a different calendar than England was. Yeah yeah, yeah,
they're all they're using all of that in Turkey at
the time. Yeah. So, like I have, we have a
hard enough time, like we have, we have a hard
time coordinating podcast interviews with people in a different time zone. Right,
(42:14):
you're talking about Thursday, but at least.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
We're in agreement about generally what month and year it is. Yeah,
you know, yeah, And all of a sudden, damn, Mustafa
Kamal says, Okay, we're doing this European Gregorian style, which
feels more modern to me, or at least this is
what all the other kids on the block are doing.
So Okay, he's committed to this.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
I mean, that's that's great, right, because we were talking
about the logistical problems of the Ottoman Empire getting troops
to Gallipoli, and you know, this is a good example
of that. Right. We can't even agree with what year
it is.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah. And then I think in some earlier episode, I
think you said even getting like a few people together
for a D and D session is just complicated enough, imagine.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he coordinates seventy five trades to transfer
like three cores of infantry to this location by this time.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
And if you look at these pages from the calendar
before the reforms, you'll see I don't know how many
different scripts. You'll see the Latin alphabet, in French, you'll
see the Greek alphabet, you'll see the cyrillic alphabet. Because
you have some Bulgarians in the mix. You'll see the
Hebrew alphabet, you'll see the Armenian alphabet, you'll see the
Arabic script.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Oh wow, because that empire spans all of those places,
so they have to kind of incorporate the calendars and
languages and scripts of those people. And so he's kind
of like, all right, we're not going to have the
ottomantive if we're going to be this, We're going to
be Turkey, now Turkey, and now like let's just do that.
Let's pick one, We'll pick one thing and it'll probably
(43:51):
be And he picked the Western version because that just
makes it easier to integrate with France and England and
Germany and all of those countries.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Yeah, and also integrating with various other countries and countries
that he perceived as more modern. And also he had
a whole movement towards being more secular because he perceived
religious diversity as being well a source of well a
(44:21):
lot of tensions, shall we say. So, Turkey became a
secular democracy andh this is unsecular.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Which is another Western idea. Right. The separation of church
and state is you know as the First Amendment, right.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Yeah, exactly yeah. He wanted to reinforce the idea that
Turkey was a secular society and not, you know, a
theocracy or whatever. So he got a hat law, passed
a hat law. I hear you say, hats. What does
what do hats have to do with anything? Well, a
(44:58):
lot of different groups had different attire and headgear that
was associated with particular religions.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
It's like gang colors.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Well okay, I mean that makes it sound adversarial, but
maybe it's just like, Okay, if you happen to be
a particular religion, maybe you just happen to dress in
a particular way, because like, I don't know, that's just like, well, okay,
maybe it is gang colors. I don't know. I feel
like there's a whole sidebarrow on what religious identity actually means.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Have a backwards hat and you like draw your swords okay, yeah,
backwards baseball.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
And so he associated hats with brims as being more
European and they're for more modern and secular, because he
didn't associate them with any particular religion. Now there's another
type of brimless hat, the fez, which was sne okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(45:57):
and it was in his had Islamic connotations, and he
was quite happy for people to continue being Muslims, but
he didn't want to make this a visible, devisive signal
or symbol in public. So in nineteen twenty five, we
have a hat law and you're only allowed to wear
(46:20):
hats with brims. You're not allowed to wear fez.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Huh. But he's we have pictures of him wearing that
kind of thing though, too, right, so like in the
old days, yeah, yeah, or he passed the hat law
because one of my favorite pictures of him, he's wearing
this big, fuzzy brimless hat where he looks like he
looks like a step warrior. He looks like gigs Kan.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Yeah, but it's probably the hat that you have to
wear as an officer of the Turkish Army, Right, that's cool?
Well yeah, and so you know, he was known, he
came to power as a warrior and a revolutionary and
a fighter, and then he kind of sees his power
of over Turkey and he's the he's the new you know,
(47:03):
the president of Turchiya. He's but he's he was went
to military academy and he's been a warrior ever since, right,
he's been fighting all over the world, but once he
comes to power, he's kind of unique among this type
of character because he is and George Washington's another good
example of this, where he is actually like pretty chill
(47:23):
as a leader. He doesn't lead like a like a conqueror.
He goes out of his way to try to establish
peace and good relations and trade rights with former enemies.
He reaches out to Greece, the Balkans, Yugoslavia, Australia, Russia,
the Commonwealth, people that he had literally been ordering men
(47:44):
to stab with bayonets, you know, not ten years earlier,
and he's traveling to their countries now and shaking hands
with them and trying to build trade relations and trying
to reunite, like bring Turkey turkeya into the Western world.
But in the process kind of heal these wounds that
have existed between these countries for centuries. Malayia, right, we
(48:07):
were talking about the Greeks. That's kind of wild. They
still can't agree on whether it's called a euro or
a shawarma, but generally friendly to each other. It's we're
saying that the Armenians still hate at a Turk. Of course,
generally speaking, he tried, but some bridges you just can't build.
But he actually ended up building a coalition of Eastern
(48:31):
European countries that we're trying to resist the fascist expansion
from Germany and Italy. So we're between World War One
and World War Two. Now Turkia is now no longer
part of this Treaty of Versailles because that applies to
the Ottoman Empire and we're not the Ottoman Empire anymore.
And you know, Hitler takes over in Germany, Mussolini takes
(48:52):
over in Italy. They're trying to assert their dominance over
Eastern Europe and at a turk is trying to present
himself and turkeya is as an alternative to that, trying
to build this coalition of democracy for Eastern Europeah, so
he starts mediating international disputes, he starts working for peace,
he starts trying to build goodwill among his neighbors. And
(49:15):
he's such he's such a cool guy that they built
a monument to him in the capital of Australia, which
like right, so, I mean, I think it's a short
list of people who have monuments to them built in
countries that they fought against I think that's a.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Short list, short list.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, yeah, I think of like noble adversaries from history, right,
but like they didn't build a Hannibal statue in Rome, right,
like even though he was a worthy adversary. You know, Bodica.
I think that Bodica burned London to the ground and
they built a Bodica statue to her. But that and
an att a Turk in Melbourne is about all I
can come up with for for building the statues to
(49:58):
the guy you fought against.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Quest for our listeners, Hey, yeast nation, if you find
yourself in a city with a town square with a
statue to a person that the country has fought against,
let us know.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think at Turk is especially
interesting in Australia because he never he never, he didn't
fight there, yeah right, The Australians went to turkeya and
fought him. He traveled to Australia and he gave a speech,
gave speeches there.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
He went there, but he gave a lot of speeches
in a lot of places.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Right, but he didn't the battle wasn't there. Yeah, I
don't know. I think it's cool.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
So the Australians apparently have a lot of respect for him,
and the Turks themselves have respect and I don't know,
love adulation.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
I mean he is the father of all and in
a more.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
I don't know, literal sense, he was the father of
several children. He adopted a bunch of kids, like nine
or ten. The government formally bestowed the title of at
a Turk on him. Now this was in nineteen thirty four,
while he was still alive, and as a Romanist, I'm
a little weirded out by this because like in ancient Rome,
(51:07):
if you get deified, it's something that happens after your death.
But this is not ancient Rome. This is modern Turkey.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
This title actually shows up on his photo ID card,
which is actually yet another one of his reforms. So
he got another modernizing reform passed called the surname Law,
and all Turks had to take on a surname. So
instead of being like you know so and so, son
(51:36):
of so and so or so and so from whatever village,
you actually had to take on a surname that could
get passed down to your descendants the way that like
you know, Ben, you could pass down Thompson to your
descendants or whatever there were. There were some restrictions on
the types of surnames. They couldn't sound too Greek or
too Armenian. Okay, And yeah, and the surname that Mustafa
(52:06):
Kamal had or chose or was suggested to him was
at a Turk and that means father of the Turks.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
So his photo ID said Mustafa Prefection, father of all
the Turks.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
I mean, can you be more badass than that? You know,
So that just became a real surname. You know, the
Turks elected him president fifteen years in a row, and
the only reason he didn't get elected a sixteenth time
was because well he died. And I have not been
to Turkey myself, but from what I gather, his pictures
all over the place, and you know, things are named
(52:43):
after him. And I'm told by a colleague who has
spent a lot of time in Turkey that, Okay, So,
Ben earlier, you compared him to George Washington, and I
think there's kind of a you know how, there's like
a George Washington slept here kind of thing. Yeah, So
there's like a kind of a similar thing with at
(53:03):
a Turk. And there's a cafe that serves a drink
called Bosa, which is a lightly fermented bulgar wheat drink
and sometimes contains cinnamon. It sometimes contains chickpeas. The janissaries
used to drink it. I get the sense that it
might be like a little bit of a protein drink
or something. So this drink is called Bosa. And there's
a cafe where apparently Mustafa camal Aka at a Turk
(53:26):
would go to drink bosa. And they have the cup,
the very cup that he drank out of, enshrined in
a little glass display case on the wall, so you know,
Atitork drank Bosa here.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
I like it. We definitely have that here for George
Washington and some other stuff. Right, like this is okay,
So the Turks love at a Turk. Clearly they liked
in president fifteen times. He dies in nineteen thirty eight,
just as you know, like a year before World War
two begins. He's only fifty seven years old. Heccomplishes all
(54:00):
of these things before he's sixty, which is just really amazing,
and I really just can't, like, you know, he was
just some guy from some kind of you know, not
huge city in TURKEYA and he goes to military academy,
(54:21):
he becomes his war hero. He finds himself like in
the middle of the biggest battle of modern Turkish military history,
wins it basically. Then they lose the war. He decides
he's not going to accept that. He creates his own
government out of nowhere, fights the entire rest of the world, wins,
then rebuilds relations with all of the people He's been
(54:44):
fighting this whole time, to the point where in nineteen
eighty one the United Nations declared it the attit Turk
Year of the world to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of
his birth. In the statement declaring this, the UN refers
to him as quote the lead of the first struggle
given against colonialism and imperialism, and they call him a
(55:05):
remarkable promoter of the sense of understanding between people's and
durable peace between the nations of the world. That he
worked all his life for the development of harmony and
cooperation between people's without distinction.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
Okay, can I just intervene. I just want to say
I appreciate all of the shine that the UN is
giving him. I do sort of wonder was it really
the first struggle given against colonial imperialism? In the history
of the world. But that's the set side side maybe
first in the sense of like really important. Okay, so.
Speaker 1 (55:37):
He was a yeah, I mean, I you know, I.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
Yes, you know. In nineteen eighty one, the United Nations
declares the year the attiturch year in the world, and.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
Yeah, yeah, and you know, and that's just kind of
a you know, I mean, and as He's said, that's
probably a pretty silly thing, right, but it is. It's
indicative of how he's been perceived in his life, right, like,
you know, having it be declared all the attitude in
the world, right, Like that's that's it's cool and it's awesome,
(56:11):
but you know, it's I'm sure there was other things
that played nineteen eighty one that attribute to this, right,
but the fact that, like he is a character that
is able to garner that type of support and respect
is really cool and it really we have kind of yeah,
(56:33):
and I've kind of delved primarily into the military stuff.
I focused more on the war hero aspect of at
a Turk than on the you know, promoter of understanding
and peace version of him that came after he won
all these wars and tries to rebuild these bridges which
it's just it's less dramatic of a story to tell,
(56:54):
but it's it's it's arguably more important, right If you
can prevent the war from happening and build peace and
understanding and bringing the world more towards being together and
peace and harmony, then I think that's more important. And
it's a thing that he really made an effort at
doing after he took control. And that's I think that's great.
(57:18):
One way that I'd like to, you know, kind of
to end this episode. One way. I'd really like to
kind of sum him up in that way, right, And
so I think what I can do here is synthesize
the two the military hero at a Turk with the
promoter of peace at a Turke. And I think I
(57:39):
could do it with a quote by him, right. I
think I mentioned that there's a statue to him in
the capital of Australia and there was a ceremony that
he he performed after World War One was over, after
the Turkish Independence War was over. He's the president, he's
rebuilding these bridges. He invites anzac So Australia, New Zealand
(58:03):
and the Commonwealth and some kirk As and all these
people he invites, uh, he invites the Commonwealth troops, the families, parents, uh,
the veterans, the soldiers of this war who were at
Gallipoli fighting against him personally. He invites them all to
a dedication ceremony at Gallipoli. Come to Turkey, and we
(58:25):
are going to build a statue here. We're going to
build a monument to all of the brave men from
every side, every country who fought and died on this battlefield,
because it is you know, it was an important battle
and it was and we need to kind of heal
and rebuild these radiations. And I want you to know that,
like yeah, it's a gesture of goodwill. And he gives
this speech to the families of these soldiers who who
(58:49):
died on the battlefield here and are buried at Gallipoli. Right,
they didn't go home. They they they die on the
beaches there and they're buried there and they're they're staying there.
So at Turk is talking to these people and he says,
those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives,
you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
(59:11):
Therefore rest in peace. There's no difference between the Johnny's
and the memds to us where they lay side by
side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers
who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away
your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom
and are at peace after having lost their lives on
(59:32):
this land. They have become our sons as well. And
I think that really kind of says a lot to
how he kind of viewed the world after this and
rebuilt these bridges. And that's at a turk, and I
think that's really cool. And that's all the time we
have for today. You guys. We hope you we hope
(59:52):
you enjoyed it, and we hope you guys will like
and subscribe and do all that stuff. So anyway, thank
you so much for the and we will see you
on the next one.
Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
Stay Badass. Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast
produced by High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me,
Pat Larish, and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is
by Me and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs
Brandon Phibbs. Mixing and music and sound design is by
(01:00:23):
Jude Brewer. Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart Badass
of the Week is based on the website Badass of
Theweek dot com, where you can read all sorts of
stories about other badasses. If you want to reach out
with questions ideas, you can email us at Badass Podcast
at badassoftheweek dot com. If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen,
(01:00:48):
and tell your friends and your enemies if you want as.
We'll be back next week with another one. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Bad Ass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced
by High five Content April twenty fifth, nineteen fifteen. From
a fortified position above the Gallipoli Peninsula, atop the shores
of Cape Hellas, the men of the Ottoman Empire's fifty
seventh Regiment can see the enemy approaching. The once tranquil
(00:25):
blue waters are littered with the gray hulls of steel warships,
their thunderous cannons aimed at the ridge line. The pristine
white sand beaches are swarming with enemy troops clamoring from
landing craft streaming up the slopes as far as the
eye can see in either direction. The fifty seventh Regiment
(00:47):
is exhausted. They're outnumbered, they're surrounded, and now they're almost
entirely out of ammunition. But this is their homeland. They
aren't going to give it up without a fight. Their
command surveys the scene. He wears a khaki uniform, a
steel helmet, a serious looking mustache, and the rank insignia
(01:08):
of a lieutenant colonel. He is a man from a
different time, a warrior who would have fit in as
well leading Sipahi horsemen into battle on the steps as
he does commanding the exhausted riflemen in this trench before him.
He gathers his surviving soldiers, anyone able to stand, rises
and draws close. He looks at them solemnly surveys their faces.
(01:34):
Each of these men is dear to him. Each of
their deaths will be meaningful. He orders them to fix bayonets.
Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kamal knows that reinforcements won't arrive in
time to save his men, but maybe their sacrifice can
(01:54):
buy the army sometime. I am not ordering you to attack,
he says to his men, drawing a long curved sword
from the scabbard at his hip. I am ordering you
to die. Then he climbs from the safety of his dugout,
points his blade at the enemy, and charges his men
(02:17):
follow with him. Hello, and welcome back to Badass of
the Week. My name is Ben Thompson and I am
here as always with my co host doctor Pat Larish. Pat,
how are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I'm doing okay, beIN and I'm excited to be here
with our Badass listeners.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yes, and we're excited to talk about somebody who is
very central to a country that has recently changed its name,
and I am going to try very intensely to use
the correct name of the country, but I'm not entirely
certain of the pronunciation yet. So it's Turkeia, right.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, yeah, it's Turkeia. So you to be spelled Turkey
like the Thanksgiving bird, and it's actually Turkya. T you
with what looks like an umlaut. I think they probably
have a different name for it, kiye, and just call
it Turkya, like Turkey with a yeah at the end Turkey.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
I think I can mand with this. Yeah, the umlauts
are like a little intimidating.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
They're just little Turkya.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Okay, well I will I will endeavor to use Turkeya, Turkia, Turkya, Turkya.
I will endeavor to use Turkya. So Turkya is having
a big year. They are celebrating their one hundredth year
as a republic October twenty ninth. Yeah, twenty twenty three
was the one hundredth year as a republic. And I
(03:51):
have written about many turk heroes over my years of
running Badass of the Week, and it's really fun to
do that because I get a lot of great feedback
from Turkish people. Who love it when I write about
the Turks, Like for me, the Turks and the Polls,
the Polish, they're always happy when I write about their
(04:12):
countries because they're two countries with these really great military traditions,
these badass heroes, these that dominated Europe. Both these countries
were dominant super military powers. Yet they always kind of
they kind of get a bad rap today and they
don't get talked about as these military powers that they
(04:33):
traditionally have been.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, and with the Ottomans, especially with the episodes that
we've done to date on our podcast, it's not so
much that they're losing necessarily, but that in the stories
that we choose to tell, they're presented as the bad guys,
or at least the antagonists. You know, we have lad
the Impaler going against the Ottoman Empire. We have Laskarina
Boobolina going against the Ottoman Empire. But what are things
(04:58):
like from a point of view of the Turks. We've
got a rich civilization, surely we must have a badass
or two and they're somewhere obviously.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, exactly right. The thing I like to talk about
with the Turks is that the national hero of every
country in Eastern Europe is the national hero of that
country because he defeated the Turks, you know, so like,
there's got to be something happening here on the other side.
Let's talk about some badass Turks. And they have great names.
That's the thing I love about Turkish heroes is they
(05:28):
have these great epithets. Right, we've Glad the Impaler is cool,
but they have sell Him, the Grim, Beyazid, the Thunderbolt,
med the Conqueror, Suliman and the Magnificent. You have all
these awesome, you know, epithets that you're like, all right,
sale him the Grim. I'm in like, well, he's badass,
all right. I don't even know anything about the guy,
but I could picture him and he's badass. But then
(05:49):
every time I post a story about a Turkish hero
or would you know. But then when I would post
these stories of these Turkish heroes, every time I I
would write the article, I would get a lot of
email from the from people in turkeya and they would say, hey,
you know, this guy's great, thanks for writing about him,
Thanks for you know, making us sound good for once,
because there's not a lot of that in the West.
(06:11):
But you're missing, like the biggest badass in our country's history.
So we gotta we gotta talk about talk about this guy.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, we definitely do yep, So let's do it. Who
is the Turk of all Turks?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yes, the Turk of all Turks, the father of all Turks,
the national hero of Turkey literally not literally, no, they
actually existed as people before him, however, not in.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Their current metaphorically figuratively, symbolically the father of Turks.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yes, yeah, and his name means that what he is
known as today is at A Turk, and that means
the father of all Turks. He is a guy who
is you know, beloved by the people of Turkia and
has been respected by the people he has fought against
in war generally, and that takes a lot. That takes
(07:02):
a lot. It is a hard line to walk of,
like respected by your enemies and loved by your people.
In fact, like in nineteen eighty one, on the anniversary
of Ata Turk's death, the United Nations actually declared nineteen
eighty one the at A Turk Year of the World
as a testament to at A Turk's abilities to quote
(07:25):
promote world peace, international understanding, and respect for human rights.
It's actually illegal to insult him in public in Turkia,
and like, yes, there's like probably some kind of fine
associated with a beating, but you actually probably just get
your ass kicked by the Turks who carried and don't
like you saying that.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, like you insulted my symbolic dad.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yes, yeah, would you say about my mama? Like, I'm.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
So tell us about this guy?
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, So I'm gonna open with a quote about him.
The quote is by a guy named Noel Barber, who
was a British journalist and novelist, and he traveled to
all these exotic countries. He reported from Morocco, where he
was stabbed five times. Apparently he got shot in the
head during the Hungarian Revolution. He got in a car
(08:15):
accident later that year, then became a bestselling novelist while
he was in his seventies.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
So I don't know, ooh hey yeah yeah, yeah, okay,
So I like the way you slid an extra bonus
badass into our episode.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, no kidding, I had no idea who okay, this
guy would.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Know this badass Noel Barber is writing about at a
Turk What does badass? Nos badass? What does Noel Barber
say about at a Turk.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
So he says, a man born out of due season
and anachronism, a throwback to the Tatars of the steps,
a fierce elemental force of a man with his military
genius and his ruthless determination. In a different age, he
might well have been a Genghis Khan conquering empires. And
when you see this guy in picture, that's what he
(09:00):
looks like. He's he's even wearing the hat.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Yeah, yeah, hats are important in this episode.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, there's gonna be a whole bunch of stuff about
hats in this episode. Anyway, stay tuned and we'll be
right back and we'll get into it. All right, welcome back.
We are going to talk about Mustafa Kamal at a Turk.
(09:27):
So the story of Ata Turk begins in eighteen eighty
one with the birth of a kid named Mustafa. It
might be kind of ironic now, but the future father
of all Turks was born in what is now present
day Thessaloniki, Greece, though at the time it was called
Salonica and it was part of the Ottoman Empire. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, the Turks liked to or the Ottoman Empire liked
to put their own names on places. And yeah, so Greece,
as listeners who listened to our last Koreena Boobolina episode
know part of the Ottoman Empire, and the Greeks were
maybe a little salty about that. We've got a lot
of stuff going on. And in eighteen eighty one, Mustafa Kamal.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Was born Mustafa. He goes to military school in Istanbul,
not Constantinople. Correct, So Musafa goes to military school in Istanbul.
He graduates as a lieutenant in nineteen oh five, and
everybody kind of knew that this guy was going to
be big time even when he was at military school.
(10:30):
His instructors nicknamed him Kamal, which is the Turkish word
for perfection. Which, yeah, that's a pretty big deal. I think.
I don't think it's every day that your drill instructor
calls you, like Mustafa perfection, right.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Yeah, yeah. I have to say, as a teacher, I
have mixed feelings about this, Like if I started nicknaming
my students, I don't think it would go well for
anyone involved. But anyway, but a different time, different places,
you know, different different mores. So yeah, so he gets
named come Al, he gets named perfection, which is kind
of nice, pretty good, and I'm assuming this means that
(11:04):
they think highly of him.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yes, and so he joins a political party called the
Young Turks. It's kind of a so right now we
are in the ending days of the Ottoman Empire and
the Young Turks. It's more than just a top twenty
five Rod Stewart song from the eighties. It is kind
of a political party that is kind of is interested
(11:28):
in reforming the Ottoman Empire. They had been sultans for
hundreds of years and they were looking and it's not
working out great for Turki at the time for the
Ottoman Empire.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Turkya kind of has a reputation in Europe as being
quote the old man of Europe, Yeah, which is kind
of agist, but letting you know that the standing of
the Ottoman Empire is like mh.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, I mean in nineteen oh five, we are people
are using rifles and canons and machine guns exist and
all of this stuff is happening and and the Turks
are still you know, they still have a sultan. In
a lot of ways, they're kind of still in this
Middle Ages time period where they were, uh, this world,
this world power very dominant world power, but they haven't
(12:17):
kind of updated with the times, and these young Turks
are kind of this new generation of guys who are like, look,
we aren't going to survive with the old way of things.
The world has changed, the industrial the Industrial Revolution has happened.
We need to catch up or we're gonna we're gonna
we're gonna get destroyed.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Yeah, get with the program.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
H And okay, great, you know, reform sounds good. Let's
let's have democracy instead of a sultan and all of
this stuff. But you know, the Sultan doesn't like that.
The Sultan tries to get Kamal dishonorably discharged and summarily
executed for treason, but it doesn't happen because the young
Turks actually do end up gaining a lot of political power,
(12:59):
and you know, they don't depose the Sultan, but they
are able to gain enough power that they can protect
their guys.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Okay, okay, great, I mean I bet Mustapha Kamal's mom
was relieved.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Yes, but the Ottoman Empire and the UN trucks are succeeding.
But we're in kind of this. We end up in
this little bit where the young Turks are successful in
beginning to change the way things are being done in
the Ottoman Empire, but the Sultan is still there and
there's a lot of work to be done, and it's
the progress is slow, and the rest of Europe is
(13:32):
on a is on a you know, on a freight
train to World War One.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, and like literally a freight train, because that's the
technology we've got, right, Yeah, So do you want to
do a quick drive by of the Ottoman Empire the
history thereof in context?
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yeah, let's do that. I think it's a good kind
of setup here, because the Ottoman Empire, you know, they've
been around at this point for a seven hundred years
and it's been it's been quite of a journey.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
For them and Ottoman. I mean, some people when they
hear the word Ottoman, they think of a footstool, a
nice poofy footstool that you put your feet up on
after a long day.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
And because I think they admitted it.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Isn't that Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean furniture is
furniture is important. This is important technology for humans anyway.
So the Ottoman Empire was founded in twelve ninety nine
by a guy called Osman and Ottoman is just a
bad European translation of his name. I think this is
what happens when you have Italians trying to fit the
name of Osman into Italian. And the Ottomans are Turkic
(14:34):
people from northwest Anatolia, which is the area that is
now Turkey. They carved some land from the Byzantines, which
was the Greek speaking Eastern Roman Empire, and it grew
into an empire that spanned the Middle East, North Africa,
and even into eastern Europe. You know, if you walk
around Vienna, you will find monuments and buildings that have
(14:58):
some connection with the Turks. But by nineteen oh eight,
you know, we've been an empire for over six hundred years,
and it takes a lot to maintain something. It wasn't
quite what it used to be. And you know, like
I said, it acquired the nickname, which is a really
unfortunate name, the sick Man of Europe. And sorry, I
(15:19):
think earlier I said the old Man of Europe, which
is kind of awful.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Neither of them sounds great, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Yeah, neither of them sounds great. Yeah yeah yeah, the
sick Man of Europe. And it's not intended as a compliment.
Yeah and yeah, I mean, okay, if you have a
sick man, what do you do, you know, you bring
him chicken soup, You send them get well cards.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
It's not if you're not if you're colonial Europe, you know,
you try to take you try to take grease back.
You try to you try to retake Salonika and rename
it the Saloniki. Yeah and yeah, that's what happens, right
that the Ottoman Empire has been making life hard for
Europe for six hundred years, and now that the Ottomans
(15:59):
are down, Europe is up. They are trying to take
land back from the Ottomans, and the Ottoman Empire is
now under attack from all sides by all of its
enemies who are looking to grab land, grab wealth, and
grab territory. So, being a young lieutenant in early nineteen hundreds,
(16:23):
you know, Mustava Camala is in the middle of a
lot of action pretty early on. Right in nineteen eleven,
he ends up in Libya where he's fighting against the
Italians who are trying to take over Libya, and he's
defending to Brook, which is like a fortress town, and
he earns a name for himself. He earns some Medal
for Bravery for leading two hundred guys on a charge
(16:46):
against a hugely larger force of Italians. He takes him
around a flank and you know they quoted as two
hundred guys against two thousand, but he does. Yeah, yeah,
And they always exaggerate this stuf when you do the
battle report, but like, whatever it was, it was very brave.
So he leads this charge out from Toebrook, gets into
(17:08):
their trenches, captures a bunch of their weapons and equipment,
and drives the Italians back. Oh yeah. A year later
he's fighting in the Balkans and he's battling the Greeks,
the Bulgarians, and the Serbians who are all trying to
retake their lands, or what they believe to be their
lands from the Ottoman Empire. You know, we've talked about
(17:30):
all the great heroes of Eastern Europe having fought the
Turk since because the Turks, you know, they took over. Yeah,
they started in Asia Minor and they ended up in
Vienna and warsaw Right and all of that territory in
between is now what like two dozen countries. That kind
of one of those Turks out of there, and so
(17:51):
at a Turk is traveling around and he's fighting in
all of these places. He's battling in North Africa and
Eastern Europe, and he's doing some pretty heavy lifting leading
troops on the front lines. He's in a lot of
combat for three years of battle. So then World War
One gets going in nineteen fourteen, and the Ottoman Empire
(18:16):
is brought into it on the side of Germany and Austria,
Hungary and Italy. Actually, so they're fighting against France and
England and Russia and this big world war. And you know,
we've done a couple of World War One stories and
I'm sure we will do many more.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
But one thing that a lot of American listeners might
not realize is that World War One was also fought
in the Ottoman Empire. In present day Turkey, fighting is
kind of at a stalemate in France with the Germans,
and the Germans will bringing up a good fight, but
the Ottoman Empire, they're the sick man of Europe. You know,
maybe if we can attack into turkeya like we can,
(19:01):
we can wound these guys, we can knock them out
of the fight. We can free up troops elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah, strategically, it sounds like a good plan.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, yeah, and it probably was. The problem is that
they ran into at a Turk.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Oh so it's not named at a Turk yet. But
he's still just what was he like a colonel?
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Lieutenant colonel, tenant colonel, which is lower than a colonel. Okay, yeah, yeah,
so he's not a high ranking officer. He's he's had
a lot of combat experience and he's shown a lot
of bravery and he's been promoted. Yeah, but he, you know,
he's kind of military academy guy, worked his way up.
He's a lieutenant colonel, which is kind of a mid range,
mid range officer, and he is stationed on the shores
(19:45):
of a place called Gallipoli, which is Gallipoly which is
a you know, military history buffs will recognize that name
is one of the more famous, kind of bloodier battles
from World War One, And he was just kind of
positioned in the reserve. He was he was set out
there on a reserve position, and Gallipoli was at a
(20:10):
choke point in the Bosporus, so kind of entry to
the Black Seas.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
If you picture Istunbul on a map, the Bosporus is
that little bit that connects Asia to Europe.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yeah, the Bosporus is important because it connects Yeah, it
connects Asia to Europe. It's it's access to the Mediterranean.
It's the only access to the Mediterranean.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, it's yeah, it's a choke point and yeah, sorry,
I'm picturing it in my head and it's it's right
right there. It's it's actually really thin in.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
A way, yeah, super thin. That was the advantage of
Constantinople is that it held held that position, right, and
so Musava Kamal is close to there, and the Turkish
high command is is not that good, right, the Sultan's guys,
they're not that talented. They're not doing well in the war.
They're getting beat in the Middle East by the Lawrence
(21:05):
of Arabia. Guys, they're they're they're struggling financially and militarily.
And the British Commonwealth sends sixteen divisions of troops, mostly
from Australia, New Zealand and India, but also British as well.
But these Commonwealth troops are going to land on Gallipoli
(21:25):
and they are going and sixteen divisions is a lot
of troops and they are going to try to cut
the Turks off from access to the Mediterranean by taking
this land. And the only guy there, the senior ranking
officer at Gallipoli, when these ships arrive, and he doesn't
have very much notice that they're coming because, like I said,
(21:45):
the logistics is not there for the Ottoman Empire. Yeah,
is Musaf Kamal, and he's got, you know, much much
smaller force and he sees these guys coming and he's like,
all right, we got to dig in. We have to
hold this otherwise we're out of the war. We lose
this battle, we lose the position. The war's over. We're
not supposed to even be like, we weren't supposed to
(22:06):
be dealing with frontline attack, but now we have to ye.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
But here we are yes.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
And so he very famously like gets his guys together
and they're outnumbered by these guys. I mean, making an
amphibious landing is very hard. The you know, they're they're
up on the high ground and these mountains looking down
onto this bay, and the British ships are coming in.
The British Navy is coming in with troop transports full
(22:33):
of Aussie's and Kiwi's, who are two pretty tough characters
to deal with. And these Turks up on the on
the on the mountain range, they're they're outnumbered, they're under equipped,
their their technology is a step below the technology that
the British Commonwealth can present. And you know, Lieutenant Colonel
(22:53):
Mustafa Kamal, he gets his guys together and he says,
all right, we're gonna hold this position. We're gonna dig
in here and we're gonna fight. And uh, you know
the quote that's attributed to him as he says, I'm
not ordering you to attack, I'm ordering you to die.
Like we are going to fight here and we're gonna
hold this line until somebody comes for us. But we aren't.
(23:17):
We aren't getting out of this right. We're not gonna
see tomorrow. We got to stay here and fight these
guys until somebody else gets over here. Because the Turks
weren't ready for this. They were totally caught off guard.
And it's hardcore and he's like, we got to you know,
we can't, we can't give this up. So we'll just
fight here until we die and then that'll give some
more time for the backup to come.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
That's dedication.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Yes, So the battle begins and Camal is his lieutenant
currently He's like, he's not I mean, he's he's two
steps below in general, right, But he is personally leading
these counter attacks. He's the one like, you know, shoot
as much as you can when you run out of bullets,
fix your bayonets, and attack. He is. He's running up
and down the line.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
He's not asking his men to do anything that he
wouldn't do himself.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
No, no, he has no intention of surviving this battle himself. Yeah, right.
He is not leading from the back. He's not even
a level of officer that would generally lead from the
back in this situation either. So he is he is
leading these guys. The British land on. The Commonwealth troops
land on the beach and they're pushing their way up
(24:24):
and the Turks are shooting down at them with machine
guns and artillery and rifles. But it's not enough, and
the Commonwealth starts to get guys on the beach. They
start to bring artillery up, they start to bring heavy
guns up. The Gurkhas, who we are definitely going to
talk about on this show in the future. But these
guys are hard to right. They take over like they
get they charge up the hill and capture one of
(24:45):
these Turkish positions on the ridge line. Mustava Kamal orders
a group of guys to just kind of fix bayonets
and counterattack them hand to hand and was able to
retake that high ground with the basically a suicide charge.
At one point he was running around through the battle
and all the you know, there's gunfire and aircraft and
the British are shooting naval artillery from their warships and stuff.
(25:09):
We're pounding the Turkish positions. He's running around.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
It's not like the Turks have their own airplanes to
respond with.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Right, they do, but not enough. Right, they're out, They're
not not what you need, right, they're under equipped. Yeah,
and the.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Odds are not in our favor here.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
No, no, And so he's running around. At one point
he sees this group of this platoon is like falling
back and he's like, where are you guys falling back?
We got to hold these positions, and they're like, we
don't have any bullets, and he's like, put your bannet
on your rifle and get back over there. And what
happens is like this is it's one of the At
the time, it was the biggest amphibious assault ever undertaken.
(25:50):
It's since been surpassed by D Day, but at the
time nothing was bigger than this uh and Hata Turk
is there and he's holding the line against all these odds.
He's holding the line and there's hundreds of thousands, literally
hundreds of thousands of Commonwealth troops trying to take this
position that he's the commander of. And yeah, like you
(26:12):
talked about leading from the front, his command headquarters was
three hundred yards from the front trenches, which is like
three hundred yards is not that far when you're talking
about World War One artillery or mortars or any of
that kind of thing. And instead of these guys fighting
to the death, they hold it, and more troops show up,
and the Ottomans are able to get reinforcements in there,
(26:34):
and the battle ends up being a victory for the
Ottoman Empire, thanks in no small part dot to most
Ava Kamal and those leadership in those first hours and
days and.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Weeks against really tough odds.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, and outnumbered by extremely well equipped and very competent soldiers.
So he gets promoted to colonel. Of course, he gets
transferred to the caucus where this time he has to
fight another defensive war, except this time he's not on
the beach. He's in the mountains fighting Russians. And then
after that he gets transferred to Syria into the desert
(27:10):
where he's fighting Lawrence of Arabia and some of these
other guys in the in the sands of Arabia. He's
got range, Yeah, he's got range. Like he's been everywhere now,
he's been fighting in Libya, Eastern Europe, on the beach,
and Turkey and everywhere, and he is able to hold
the line against everything they threw against him.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
So yeah, that's most off a Kamal and his military resume.
How's that going for the Ottoman Empire in general?
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Yeah, the you know, Germany's defeated, the Ottoman Empire is defeated.
And there is this Treaty of Versailles that we talk
about all the time whenever we want to bring up
World War two stuff, and you know, the Ottoman Empire
is named in the Versailles Treaty, and it's it's hard.
It's hard on the Turks. It's extremely harsh on the Turks,
and a lot of that territory that the Serbians and
(28:01):
the Greeks and all those other people wanted back. The
Ottoman Empire has to give it up in this treaty.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
But that's not the end of our story.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
It's not the end of our story. It's honestly, it's
kind of the beginning of the story.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Right, So should we take a break and tell the
rest of the story after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
We are at the end of World War One, and
Mustafa Kamal has been this great hero of the Ottoman Empire,
this great warrior, this leader of military forces, who has
won every battle he's fought in and done so heroically
against impossible odds. Yet his country's still lost. And now
(28:50):
he's here with you, all of these very heavy penalties
being levied against the Ottoman Empire in this treaty of
versus that ends World War One, and that's hard for him.
And on top of that, he was a member of
these young Turks who who kind of are trying to
reject the old way of doing things anyway, right, he
(29:14):
doesn't like his bosses and his superiors and his government,
and they've done nothing to support him, and now they've
signed this slame treaty that you know, gives up all
of this territory. There's Greek troops marching through Istanbul. There's
probably some talk of it being renamed Constantinople. Right, this
is unacceptable, Yeah, yeah, So Ustafakemal decides he's not going
(29:38):
to take it. He's not going to abide by the
terms of this treaty, which just seems kind of crazy, right,
it seems really it's a treaty. Come on, a treaty, right,
like we lost the Warrior, we got to do this.
But he's he's not happy with this, and so he
he leaves istan Bull in a boat and he crosses
the Black Sea and he lands in Ankara, the city
(29:59):
of Ankara, and declares an open revolt against the foreign
powers occupying his homeland. He is he's a currentl he's
still not even a general. But he lands there and
he says, I'm not going to take this. I'm going
to fight, I'm going to fight, I'm going to reopen
this war. And who's with me? And it turns out
there's a lot of people that was with him. And
(30:19):
if you ever wonder why Stample is not the capital
of Turkey, and right now, this is why. Because it
was left because he was mad, and he sailed here
and he built a new capital here.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah, and Cara. You know, it's no slouch. It's been
inhabited for millennia. It's going back to well before the
second millennium BCE, and according to some stories, was founded
by King Midas, yes, the Golden Touch guy, but even
before King Midas. Some ancient sources Pausanias for those of
you who are keeping track, say that it was even
(30:50):
older than King Midas. So you know, make of that
what you will. The takeaway is there's been some sort
of human presence around Ankara for a but it really
took off once Mustafa Kamal later known as Ataturk, decided
that the Turks needed a symbolic fresh start, and he
just said, okay, we're moving the capital here.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Yeah, and you know, he basically declares war on the
Anton Powers from World War One, which really doesn't seem
like it'd be a good idea because you know, Germany
was a big help in that war. But you know, weirdly,
like you know, he gets attacked of course immediately by
France and Britain and Greece. They're trying to reach they're
(31:34):
trying to capture in a car. They're trying to get him,
They're trying to get his guys.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
So you mean attacked like like literally physisically.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Attacked, just attacked with words no no, no, guns and
tanks and airplanes and things are coming for him in ships.
But it took He has pretty far from the Commonwealth
and France, and these guys have just suffered very like
badly in the war and they were probably happy to
have it over. The Greeks, the Armenians, the Serbians, they're
(32:02):
very committed because this is their turf and they want
to fight this.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, this is much closer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but their
neighbor exactly.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
But for England and France, it's not you know, it's
not as easy to get troops out there, and there's
some political problems of you know, the people of those
countries being like, hey, I think we've lost enough guys
in World War One, like we're pretty much done with
having a dead Frenchmen and dead Englishmen. And Ata Turk's
able to hold and kara against them and drive them back.
(32:30):
And he's leading troops against the Greeks and the Armenians
and the Serbians and these other Eastern European powers and
he's defeating them and is able to reunify Anatolia, declare
Turkish independence basically from these other countries and basically say
we're not doing this treaty. They fight him and he wins,
(32:54):
and so he's not doing the treaty.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
That's a w Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Now there's a bit of a sticky thing we need
to talk about here involving at a Turk and we
have to mention it, and I think it's it would
be irresponsible not to you. But one thing that is
kind of a sticky question here is the the involvement
of Mustava Camal in what we know as the Armenian genocide, right,
(33:20):
which is a thing that is not talked about very
much in Turkeia, but because.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
I think it's actually some sort of illegal to talk
about it, or it has been illegal. I think you're right,
there's a lot of pressure to not There has been
a lot of pressure to not talk about it, and
I don't know exactly the details, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Yeah, So it creates a bit of a tough thing
for us to deal with here because you know, the
the majority of the atrocities that occurred, and we have
a lot of We have a lot of physical evidence
that really, really bad thing happened to the people of
Armenia at the hands of the Turks and the young Turks,
(34:04):
which was a movement at a Turk was part of,
although he you know, the more I don't even know
how to quantify this, but like the worst bits of
it happened before he was even old enough to be
you know, before he was He's not involved in any
of this. He's not lining people up in the streets
and shooting them, right, He's not doing that kind of stuff.
(34:25):
I don't know. Talking about this is difficult, but so
the greater part of the Armenian genocide happens before at
a Turk's time. But where he gets tied in is
some of the fighting here right at the end of
World War One, where he's trying to retake Turkey from
these foreign powers that have overtaken it. In doing this,
(34:45):
he takes some territory from the Greeks and the Armenians,
and in the process of these fighting, civilians are killed,
and these civilian killings get lumped in with the Armenian jedocide.
It's not a great look for at a.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Turk, but no, it's not a great look whatever, whatever
the reality and whatever the actual involvement, it's not I agree,
it's not a great look.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Yeah. Yeah, So it's kind of a sticky thing where
he gets he gets lumped in there. Uh it's hard man,
because the Armenians they believe that he is part of it, right, Like, yeah,
they really.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
And I understand why, sure, you know, but I also
understand why he's not.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yeah, yeah, he's not.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Depending on how you look at it, right, he's not.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
There for these things that are happening. And there's basically
there's one big city that gets taken and the Greek
and the Armenian quarter gets burned and a lot of
people die. This it's horrible and it's a tragedy and
it's it's a terrible thing that happens to these civilian.
Civilians shouldn't be killed in war. But I think there's
a difference between rounding up all of the Armenians in
(35:49):
town and systematically executing them versus your army captures the
town and a bunch of people die in the process.
So I don't know, I don't know how to talk
about it.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Be that as it may, however you look at it,
it was a great tragedy. Yes, and and so this
is a complication in the figure of at A Turk.
Let's just acknowledge that that's a thing.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean in my reading of him
and my understanding of him at the time and later on,
like this really wasn't his I don't see this as
kind of the black mark that that some people argue
that it is, right, I don't really believe that he was.
He doesn't really strike me as the kind of person that.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
It doesn't jive with some of his progressive and humanitarian
moves later.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah, yeah, it doesn't. And he in later years will
do a lot of work to try to repair these bridges.
You know, some people accept that more than others. But
he does do a lot of work, and he is
you know, it is the United Nations Year of Adit Turk,
because he does spend a lot of time and energy
later on in his career trying to you know, rebuild
(37:05):
relations with the Armenians and the Greeks and other people
that he had been at war with for all of
the history of the Ottoman Empire.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Yeah yeah, okay, well, so that's kind of a somber note.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
But but let's move on.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, let's move on. And when all the dust has settled, yes,
and Turkia is free from European domination, what do things
look like? What are we up to?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Okay, so it's nineteen twenty three now, and sovokamal is
I mean he's basically the George Washington of TURKEYA. Right
he actually, yeah, he is right. And he gets elected. Yeah, yeah,
he gets elected the first president of democratic Turkeia. Like,
they overthrow the soulson and they abolish the sultanate. The Sultan,
(38:01):
the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, walks out of
the palace and there's a photo of him getting in
a car and driving away, and that's the end of
the Sultans. They're gone. There, they've been voted out, and
now there's the democracy in TURKEYA and at a Turk
is selected the first president of Turkia. And he is
at the time forty two years old. So he's I
don't know what my age, I think, which is kind
(38:22):
of depressing to think about.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
No no, no, no no no no. No. Numbers are arbitrary,
that's yeah. Yeah, so maybe he's forty two, like base
twelve or something.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Well, he he sets up a secular, non religious affiliated
democracy and spends the next decade trying to modernize that
country through like three hundred years of modernization, which he
is able to do remarkably effectively. He institutes these sweeping
(38:54):
legal changes, puts in mandatory education, abolishes laws that deny
freedom in a quality to women, and he does a
lot of things to kind of bring the Ottoman Empire
into or now Turkia, into the modern.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
World in Ata Turk's mind, in Mustafa Kamal's mind, a
lot of what meant the modern world was European. The
Ottoman Empire had been using the Arabic script, the Arabic
alphabet to write Turkish language documents, but Kamal changes this
(39:29):
to the Latin script. So you know the alphabet that
we used to write English, and okay, you had to
add a few letters with little dots over them because
you had to represent Turkish pronunciation. But it's like, bam, okay, hey,
you just need to learn a new alphabet. And he also,
and I'm recording this, you know, Ben, you and I
are recording this. A few days after we changed to
(39:52):
we only change from daylight saving time to standard time.
And that's only one hour of time difference. But there
were in the early twentieth century, Like I think, maybe
I don't know, six different ways of telling the date
the day and date and year in Turkey. Kamal says, okay, a,
(40:15):
this is ridiculous. You need a higher degree in mathematics
to figure out what day is a week it is.
And also, hey, let's just streamline this and let's be
all like modern, which means okay, yeah, it means European.
So one of if you actually look up the term
roomy calendar are um i calendar, you will find images
(40:39):
of a calendar page that has like so many different
ways of telling the date, and you might find like
April twenty fifth actually corresponds to I'm just making this up,
like May eighth. You've got the difference between the Gregorian
and the Julian calendar. You've got the difference between the
Islamic and the generally Christian calendar. And so at Turk says, okay,
(41:01):
I'm calling him at a Turk. I forget when exactly
he gets the name at a trick, but anyway, our
guy Mustafakamal. He cuts through the Gordian knot of calendars,
and he says, Okay, we're just going to do this
European style and he waves his magic wand or whatever
the I don't know, whatever legislative or executive thing he has.
(41:23):
So basically, anyone who has been telling time or telling
the date by the Islamic calendar, which would have been
the year would have been thirteen hundred something.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Oh, because even the years are different.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, crazy.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
It's all like think of like the earth is five
thousand years old or whatever, and the Muslims still time
by Mohammed and the Christian sellate by a by Jesus Christ.
Oh wow, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
So you've got all of a sudden bam, we're like
almost like I don't know, six hundred years.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Well, the Julian and the Gregorian calendar is the thing
we were talking about earlier. It's like how how Russia
was on a different calendar than England was. Yeah yeah, yeah,
they're all they're using all of that in Turkey at
the time. Yeah. So, like I have, we have a
hard enough time, like we have, we have a hard
time coordinating podcast interviews with people in a different time zone. Right,
(42:14):
you're talking about Thursday, but at least.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
We're in agreement about generally what month and year it is. Yeah,
you know, yeah, And all of a sudden, damn, Mustafa
Kamal says, Okay, we're doing this European Gregorian style, which
feels more modern to me, or at least this is
what all the other kids on the block are doing.
So Okay, he's committed to this.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
I mean, that's that's great, right, because we were talking
about the logistical problems of the Ottoman Empire getting troops
to Gallipoli, and you know, this is a good example
of that. Right. We can't even agree with what year
it is.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah. And then I think in some earlier episode, I
think you said even getting like a few people together
for a D and D session is just complicated enough, imagine.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he coordinates seventy five trades to transfer
like three cores of infantry to this location by this time.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
And if you look at these pages from the calendar
before the reforms, you'll see I don't know how many
different scripts. You'll see the Latin alphabet, in French, you'll
see the Greek alphabet, you'll see the cyrillic alphabet. Because
you have some Bulgarians in the mix. You'll see the
Hebrew alphabet, you'll see the Armenian alphabet, you'll see the
Arabic script.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Oh wow, because that empire spans all of those places,
so they have to kind of incorporate the calendars and
languages and scripts of those people. And so he's kind
of like, all right, we're not going to have the
ottomantive if we're going to be this, We're going to
be Turkey, now Turkey, and now like let's just do that.
Let's pick one, We'll pick one thing and it'll probably
(43:51):
be And he picked the Western version because that just
makes it easier to integrate with France and England and
Germany and all of those countries.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Yeah, and also integrating with various other countries and countries
that he perceived as more modern. And also he had
a whole movement towards being more secular because he perceived
religious diversity as being well a source of well a
(44:21):
lot of tensions, shall we say. So, Turkey became a
secular democracy andh this is unsecular.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Which is another Western idea. Right. The separation of church
and state is you know as the First Amendment, right.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Yeah, exactly yeah. He wanted to reinforce the idea that
Turkey was a secular society and not, you know, a
theocracy or whatever. So he got a hat law, passed
a hat law. I hear you say, hats. What does
what do hats have to do with anything? Well, a
(44:58):
lot of different groups had different attire and headgear that
was associated with particular religions.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
It's like gang colors.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Well okay, I mean that makes it sound adversarial, but
maybe it's just like, Okay, if you happen to be
a particular religion, maybe you just happen to dress in
a particular way, because like, I don't know, that's just like, well, okay,
maybe it is gang colors. I don't know. I feel
like there's a whole sidebarrow on what religious identity actually means.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Have a backwards hat and you like draw your swords okay, yeah,
backwards baseball.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
And so he associated hats with brims as being more
European and they're for more modern and secular, because he
didn't associate them with any particular religion. Now there's another
type of brimless hat, the fez, which was sne okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(45:57):
and it was in his had Islamic connotations, and he
was quite happy for people to continue being Muslims, but
he didn't want to make this a visible, devisive signal
or symbol in public. So in nineteen twenty five, we
have a hat law and you're only allowed to wear
(46:20):
hats with brims. You're not allowed to wear fez.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Huh. But he's we have pictures of him wearing that
kind of thing though, too, right, so like in the
old days, yeah, yeah, or he passed the hat law
because one of my favorite pictures of him, he's wearing
this big, fuzzy brimless hat where he looks like he
looks like a step warrior. He looks like gigs Kan.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Yeah, but it's probably the hat that you have to
wear as an officer of the Turkish Army, Right, that's cool?
Well yeah, and so you know, he was known, he
came to power as a warrior and a revolutionary and
a fighter, and then he kind of sees his power
of over Turkey and he's the he's the new you know,
(47:03):
the president of Turchiya. He's but he's he was went
to military academy and he's been a warrior ever since, right,
he's been fighting all over the world, but once he
comes to power, he's kind of unique among this type
of character because he is and George Washington's another good
example of this, where he is actually like pretty chill
(47:23):
as a leader. He doesn't lead like a like a conqueror.
He goes out of his way to try to establish
peace and good relations and trade rights with former enemies.
He reaches out to Greece, the Balkans, Yugoslavia, Australia, Russia,
the Commonwealth, people that he had literally been ordering men
(47:44):
to stab with bayonets, you know, not ten years earlier,
and he's traveling to their countries now and shaking hands
with them and trying to build trade relations and trying
to reunite, like bring Turkey turkeya into the Western world.
But in the process kind of heal these wounds that
have existed between these countries for centuries. Malayia, right, we
(48:07):
were talking about the Greeks. That's kind of wild. They
still can't agree on whether it's called a euro or
a shawarma, but generally friendly to each other. It's we're
saying that the Armenians still hate at a Turk. Of course,
generally speaking, he tried, but some bridges you just can't build.
But he actually ended up building a coalition of Eastern
(48:31):
European countries that we're trying to resist the fascist expansion
from Germany and Italy. So we're between World War One
and World War Two. Now Turkia is now no longer
part of this Treaty of Versailles because that applies to
the Ottoman Empire and we're not the Ottoman Empire anymore.
And you know, Hitler takes over in Germany, Mussolini takes
(48:52):
over in Italy. They're trying to assert their dominance over
Eastern Europe and at a turk is trying to present
himself and turkeya is as an alternative to that, trying
to build this coalition of democracy for Eastern Europeah, so
he starts mediating international disputes, he starts working for peace,
he starts trying to build goodwill among his neighbors. And
(49:15):
he's such he's such a cool guy that they built
a monument to him in the capital of Australia, which
like right, so, I mean, I think it's a short
list of people who have monuments to them built in
countries that they fought against I think that's a.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Short list, short list.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, yeah, I think of like noble adversaries from history, right,
but like they didn't build a Hannibal statue in Rome, right,
like even though he was a worthy adversary. You know, Bodica.
I think that Bodica burned London to the ground and
they built a Bodica statue to her. But that and
an att a Turk in Melbourne is about all I
can come up with for for building the statues to
(49:58):
the guy you fought against.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Quest for our listeners, Hey, yeast nation, if you find
yourself in a city with a town square with a
statue to a person that the country has fought against,
let us know.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think at Turk is especially
interesting in Australia because he never he never, he didn't
fight there, yeah right, The Australians went to turkeya and
fought him. He traveled to Australia and he gave a speech,
gave speeches there.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
He went there, but he gave a lot of speeches
in a lot of places.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Right, but he didn't the battle wasn't there. Yeah, I
don't know. I think it's cool.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
So the Australians apparently have a lot of respect for him,
and the Turks themselves have respect and I don't know,
love adulation.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
I mean he is the father of all and in
a more.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
I don't know, literal sense, he was the father of
several children. He adopted a bunch of kids, like nine
or ten. The government formally bestowed the title of at
a Turk on him. Now this was in nineteen thirty four,
while he was still alive, and as a Romanist, I'm
a little weirded out by this because like in ancient Rome,
(51:07):
if you get deified, it's something that happens after your death.
But this is not ancient Rome. This is modern Turkey.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
This title actually shows up on his photo ID card,
which is actually yet another one of his reforms. So
he got another modernizing reform passed called the surname Law,
and all Turks had to take on a surname. So
instead of being like you know so and so, son
(51:36):
of so and so or so and so from whatever village,
you actually had to take on a surname that could
get passed down to your descendants the way that like
you know, Ben, you could pass down Thompson to your
descendants or whatever there were. There were some restrictions on
the types of surnames. They couldn't sound too Greek or
too Armenian. Okay, And yeah, and the surname that Mustafa
(52:06):
Kamal had or chose or was suggested to him was
at a Turk and that means father of the Turks.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
So his photo ID said Mustafa Prefection, father of all
the Turks.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
I mean, can you be more badass than that? You know,
So that just became a real surname. You know, the
Turks elected him president fifteen years in a row, and
the only reason he didn't get elected a sixteenth time
was because well he died. And I have not been
to Turkey myself, but from what I gather, his pictures
all over the place, and you know, things are named
(52:43):
after him. And I'm told by a colleague who has
spent a lot of time in Turkey that, Okay, So,
Ben earlier, you compared him to George Washington, and I
think there's kind of a you know how, there's like
a George Washington slept here kind of thing. Yeah, So
there's like a kind of a similar thing with at
(53:03):
a Turk. And there's a cafe that serves a drink
called Bosa, which is a lightly fermented bulgar wheat drink
and sometimes contains cinnamon. It sometimes contains chickpeas. The janissaries
used to drink it. I get the sense that it
might be like a little bit of a protein drink
or something. So this drink is called Bosa. And there's
a cafe where apparently Mustafa camal Aka at a Turk
(53:26):
would go to drink bosa. And they have the cup,
the very cup that he drank out of, enshrined in
a little glass display case on the wall, so you know,
Atitork drank Bosa here.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
I like it. We definitely have that here for George
Washington and some other stuff. Right, like this is okay,
So the Turks love at a Turk. Clearly they liked
in president fifteen times. He dies in nineteen thirty eight,
just as you know, like a year before World War
two begins. He's only fifty seven years old. Heccomplishes all
(54:00):
of these things before he's sixty, which is just really amazing,
and I really just can't, like, you know, he was
just some guy from some kind of you know, not
huge city in TURKEYA and he goes to military academy,
(54:21):
he becomes his war hero. He finds himself like in
the middle of the biggest battle of modern Turkish military history,
wins it basically. Then they lose the war. He decides
he's not going to accept that. He creates his own
government out of nowhere, fights the entire rest of the world, wins,
then rebuilds relations with all of the people He's been
(54:44):
fighting this whole time, to the point where in nineteen
eighty one the United Nations declared it the attit Turk
Year of the world to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of
his birth. In the statement declaring this, the UN refers
to him as quote the lead of the first struggle
given against colonialism and imperialism, and they call him a
(55:05):
remarkable promoter of the sense of understanding between people's and
durable peace between the nations of the world. That he
worked all his life for the development of harmony and
cooperation between people's without distinction.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
Okay, can I just intervene. I just want to say
I appreciate all of the shine that the UN is
giving him. I do sort of wonder was it really
the first struggle given against colonial imperialism? In the history
of the world. But that's the set side side maybe
first in the sense of like really important. Okay, so.
Speaker 1 (55:37):
He was a yeah, I mean, I you know, I.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
Yes, you know. In nineteen eighty one, the United Nations
declares the year the attiturch year in the world, and.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
Yeah, yeah, and you know, and that's just kind of
a you know, I mean, and as He's said, that's
probably a pretty silly thing, right, but it is. It's
indicative of how he's been perceived in his life, right, like,
you know, having it be declared all the attitude in
the world, right, Like that's that's it's cool and it's awesome,
(56:11):
but you know, it's I'm sure there was other things
that played nineteen eighty one that attribute to this, right,
but the fact that, like he is a character that
is able to garner that type of support and respect
is really cool and it really we have kind of yeah,
(56:33):
and I've kind of delved primarily into the military stuff.
I focused more on the war hero aspect of at
a Turk than on the you know, promoter of understanding
and peace version of him that came after he won
all these wars and tries to rebuild these bridges which
it's just it's less dramatic of a story to tell,
(56:54):
but it's it's it's arguably more important, right If you
can prevent the war from happening and build peace and
understanding and bringing the world more towards being together and
peace and harmony, then I think that's more important. And
it's a thing that he really made an effort at
doing after he took control. And that's I think that's great.
(57:18):
One way that I'd like to, you know, kind of
to end this episode. One way. I'd really like to
kind of sum him up in that way, right, And
so I think what I can do here is synthesize
the two the military hero at a Turk with the
promoter of peace at a Turke. And I think I
(57:39):
could do it with a quote by him, right. I
think I mentioned that there's a statue to him in
the capital of Australia and there was a ceremony that
he he performed after World War One was over, after
the Turkish Independence War was over. He's the president, he's
rebuilding these bridges. He invites anzac So Australia, New Zealand
(58:03):
and the Commonwealth and some kirk As and all these
people he invites, uh, he invites the Commonwealth troops, the families, parents, uh,
the veterans, the soldiers of this war who were at
Gallipoli fighting against him personally. He invites them all to
a dedication ceremony at Gallipoli. Come to Turkey, and we
(58:25):
are going to build a statue here. We're going to
build a monument to all of the brave men from
every side, every country who fought and died on this battlefield,
because it is you know, it was an important battle
and it was and we need to kind of heal
and rebuild these radiations. And I want you to know that,
like yeah, it's a gesture of goodwill. And he gives
this speech to the families of these soldiers who who
(58:49):
died on the battlefield here and are buried at Gallipoli. Right,
they didn't go home. They they they die on the
beaches there and they're buried there and they're they're staying there.
So at Turk is talking to these people and he says,
those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives,
you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
(59:11):
Therefore rest in peace. There's no difference between the Johnny's
and the memds to us where they lay side by
side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers
who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away
your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom
and are at peace after having lost their lives on
(59:32):
this land. They have become our sons as well. And
I think that really kind of says a lot to
how he kind of viewed the world after this and
rebuilt these bridges. And that's at a turk, and I
think that's really cool. And that's all the time we
have for today. You guys. We hope you we hope
(59:52):
you enjoyed it, and we hope you guys will like
and subscribe and do all that stuff. So anyway, thank
you so much for the and we will see you
on the next one.
Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
Stay Badass. Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast
produced by High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me,
Pat Larish, and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is
by Me and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs
Brandon Phibbs. Mixing and music and sound design is by
(01:00:23):
Jude Brewer. Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart Badass
of the Week is based on the website Badass of
Theweek dot com, where you can read all sorts of
stories about other badasses. If you want to reach out
with questions ideas, you can email us at Badass Podcast
at badassoftheweek dot com. If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen,
(01:00:48):
and tell your friends and your enemies if you want as.
We'll be back next week with another one. For more
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