The Cult of Personality

Before I arrived in Turkey Darius had told me it was the most nationalistic country he had ever visited, but I was skeptical. I have always thought the U.S. was pretty good at the whole nationalism thing. We recite the pledge of allegiance in school every day, we sing the national anthem before baseball games, we hang flags on our porches and car dealerships fly flags that are visible from the moon. Upon arrival in Turkey however, I was pretty quickly convinced that Darius was right. The car dealership size flag in the U.S. is standard size in Turkey. City squares are covered with banners and flags; flags fly from the tops of tram cars and are draped over the windows of office buildings so that workers can't see out their cubicle windows.


The thing that really puts Turkey ahead of the U.S. in the nationalism category however is the personallity cult that has developed around the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.Ataturk was a Turkish army officer who rose to prominence in the first quarter of the Twentieth Century and was founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey. He is generally credited with bringing Turkey into the modern era by introducing the latin alphabet and teaching Turkish in schools to establish a standard national language, and by outlawing the fez (a law which evidently remains on the books but is rarely enforced). Now his portrait hangs in almost every business establishment; from restaraunts and cafes to barber shops, in every school and public building, and seems to grace almost every denomination of currency. The banners in city squares often have his regal profile against the red backdrop of the Turkish flag and the larger of the two airports in Istnabul bares his name. I had the good fortune to visit Turkey on the 86th anniversary of the foundation of the Republic, so huge banners featuring Ataturk fighting in the trenches, Ataturk teaching children to read, or Ataturk simply looking stately and official, were draped everywhere. The American founding fathers really have nothing on this guy.