Atatürk Commemoration Day: One Moment of Silence. Everywhere.
The day before western countries celebrate Remembrance (UK/Canada) or Veterans Day (USA), Turks pause to remember their founder
Sunday morning, I left early to take a tram to church. Luckily, a dolmush was driving by as I reached the street to the train station (a dolmuş is a private minibus that follows established bus routes and picks up passengers for 20 TL cash — about 65 cents).
It was 9:02.
Three minutes later, we passed a man standing at a bus stop. He didn’t signal the driver for a ride. He stood at attention, looking away in the distance, tears in his eyes.
I looked at my phone. It was 9:05.
Instead of a friendly “beep” (a feature of dolmuş drivers, hoping you’ll raise your arms to ask for a ride), my driver pulled the minibus over, and we waited. Silent. For one full minute.
The silence ended with the sounds of car horns in the distance.
It was Atatürk'ü Anma Günu (Atatürk Commemoration Day).For the 86th year since his death, at the very moment of his passing, Turkey had honored its founding father, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
I’m not sure what it is about the first weeks of November and remembrance of the dead. November 11, of course, marked the end of the First World War — celebrated first as “Armistice Day” it eventually evolved into a day of remembering veterans, living and dead.
November 1st has been celebrated in western Christendom as “All Saints Day” since 735. And along with remembering the saints, many other pre-Christian spectres of death appeared on All Hallows Eve or Halloween. In fact, signs point to the fact that more people in America and the UK celebrate Halloween than Christmas!
The days are getting colder. Chillier. Maybe that puts death on the mind. Harvests are in and before a season of Thanksgiving, the theme of Remembrance seems apt. At my old church in the States, we would read the names of loved ones who had passed away during the previous year, and someone would ring a bell after every name.
Here in Turkey, Remembrance is intentionally secular. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who founded the Turkish Republic following the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922, and served as its president until his death at 9:05 AM on the 10th of November 1938.
I have written before about how Atatürk saved Turkey from becoming divided up and colonized after World War I. He is an essential figure for Turkey today, 86 years after his death — an icon of the nation whose portrait is displayed nearly as often as the flag.
Those who come from western countries where political leaders are ridiculed will be surprised by the adoration shown Turkey’s founder. I find it is genuine. The tagline for the billboards that appeared everywhere around Izmir this weekend, “Özlemin Sonsuz,” means “Missing you endlessly.” His lifespan rotates the number 8 in 1938 to the infinity symbol: “1881-193∞.”
When Turks say, “endlessly,” they really mean it!
A few more notes on Atatürk Commemoration Day:
The church I go to here is Anglican, and our Remembrance Day service was Sunday as well. I passed posters of Atatürk to find church full of uniformed British military. We read the names of British men from Izmir’s Levantine community who had returned to Britain and had died fighting in France.
I have been at school the previous two times it was celebrated. My school is run by a Turkish organization, and we do not miss out, despite having so many foreign students & teachers. Students are gathered to the courtyard around 8:45. The Turkish national anthem is played, and there are speeches by Turkish students and staff, explaining something about the country’s founder. Then a siren wails, all the students observe silence, and we return to the day.
When I was in Istanbul recently, I visited Dolmabahçe Palace and saw the room where Atatürk passed away. A quilt styled like a Turkish flag covers the bed, and there is a clock on a nightstand forever stuck at 9:05. A room across the hall shows a cabinet of medicines which doctors used to treat him in his final days, ailing from cirrhosis of the liver. The palace had been built by Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid in the 1840s and served as the Leader’s base when he had business in Istanbul (he had moved the nation’s capital to Ankara).
Tomorrow I will post a blog about an oratorio I attended in Izmir that honored Atatürk.
Hi James, Last year I was in Istanbul during this time but I was not aware of this fact and missed this 1 minute silence obsereved in rememberence of the father of nation. May be some other time I will witness that. It was great read... keep writting.