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Performing modernity: Atatürk on film (1919-1938)
Dinç, E.
Publication date 2016 Document Version Final published version
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Download date:27 Sep 2021 Chapter 2
Mustafa Kemal, Cinema and Turkey: The Early Years (1919-1923)
The establishment of the Army Film Shooting Center described in the previous chapter shows the Ankara government’s investment in the medium of film. Moreover, it demonstrates their leader Mustafa Kemal’s particular interest in cinema. Film footage from this period featuring Mustafa Kemal suggests that he had particular ideas about how to employ film to create a strong public image in order to influence public opinion with regard to the national struggle. In this chapter, I discuss the specific importance of film for Mustafa Kemal and his followers’ political agenda during the War of Independence and its aftermath. Specifically, I analyze the cultural symbols and messages that are employed in the films made in this period. This helps us to understand an essential part of the nationalists’ approach towards this medium.
Despite its technical shortcomings, Mustafa Kemal and his followers were well aware of the political uses of cinema in this period for two main reasons. Firstly, film proved to have an immediate benefit as an effective propaganda tool during the war to influence public opinion at home and abroad. Secondly, film offered a supposed eyewitness account for future reference. Films shot in this period are often used as documentary evidence. The idea was that images recorded during the war would endure as visual proof even in the absence of the original referent. Moreover, being a technological medium capable of capturing movement in time and space, film connoted a certain feeling of presence, immediacy and reality for the audience.1 As Doane states, with cinema technology, the image “registered instantly, apparently without any intermediary, […] conveys a sense of immediacy of the real.”2
1 Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 151. 2 Ibid.. Mustafa Kemal and his followers made use of two domestic institutions to record the important events of the War of Independence: the Army Shooting Center and Kemal Film.3 The Army Shooting Center made a number of short films, including İzmir Zaferi (The Victory of İzmir, 1922), Dumlupınar Vekayi’i (The Incidents of Dumlupınar, 1922), İzmir Nasıl İstirdat Edildi (How was İzmir Taken Back? 1922), İzmir’in İşgali (The Occupation of İzmir, 1922), İzmir’deki Yunan Fecayii (The Disasters caused by Greeks in İzmir, 1922), İzmir Yanıyor (İzmir in Flames, 1922) and Gazi’nin İzmir'e Gelişi ve Karşılanışı (The Arrival and Reception of the Ghazi in İzmir, 1922) and İstiklâl (Independence, 1922).4 Şener suggests that Kemal Film shot forty-seven news films during this period.5
One of Kemal Film’s most important newsreels was Gazi Mustafa Kemal Paşa'nın İzmit Cephesini Teftişi (The Inspection of the İzmit Front by Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha).6 It shows Mustafa Kemal inspecting the Turkish army before an offensive against the Greek army. After making the decision to start the offensive, Mustafa Kemal went to inspect the Kocaeli Grubu (Kocaeli Group) in the region of İzmit and Adapazarı between 12 and 24 June 1922.7 Besides inspecting the front, he gave some interviews to journalists about the Grand National Assembly’s view on the current situation. He also met the famous French author Claude Farrère on 18 June in İzmit to convey his ideas about the Turkish cause to the European public and to undermine enemy propaganda asserting that the Turks were persecuting the Christian population in Anatolia.8
International interest in the Greco-Turkish War was not limited to the French. The cameraman of Gazi Mustafa Kemal Paşa'nın İzmit Cephesini Teftişi, Cezmi Ar, noted that some American filmmakers came to Istanbul around this time in
3 Kemal Film was the first Turkish private film company, founded by Kemal and Şakir Seden brothers in Istanbul in 1922. See Erman Şener, Kurtuluş Savaşı ve Sinemamız (Dizi Yayınları, 1970), 23, 25. 4 Genelkurmay Başkanlığı, letter to author, July 16, 2012. See also Şener, Kurtuluş Savaşı ve Sinemamız, 26. 5 Ibid., 23. 6 Ibid. 7 In response to Mustafa Kemal’s inspection at İzmit front, the British installed an artillery unit on Alemdağı. See Sabahattin Özel, “Atatürk’ün Büyük Taarruz Öncesinde Adapazarı-İzmit Gezisi (12- 24 Haziran 1922),” Yakın Dönem Türkiye Araştırmaları, no: 5 (2004): 145, 174. 8 Ibid., 154-162.
50 order to make a documentary about the war.9 According to Şener, although the American cameramen’s arrival at the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul coincided with Mustafa Kemal Pasha’s inspection of the İzmit front, which was open to all journalists wanting to interview Mustafa Kemal, this news was hidden from the Americans and, instead, Cezmi Ar went to İzmit in order to film the event. 10 When Ar arrived, he first filmed Mustafa Kemal getting off the train. The next day, when Mustafa Kemal’s convoy went from İzmit to Gebze, the crew of Kemal Film, including Cezmi Ar and Şakir Seden, received permission to accompany it. There, Ar shot several more films, including close-ups of Mustafa Kemal. After leaving the convoy in Gebze, the Kemal Film crew went to Istanbul, where the films were immediately developed in the Kemal Film laboratory and distributed across the country.11
Ar’s story points to an important detail about the fierce journalistic competition that characterized the early twentieth century. In this period, such competition already went beyond the domestic level, so that journalists of one country sometimes had to compete not only with their local colleagues but also with foreign journalists. One of the most important reasons for this fierce competition was an important force in politics: public opinion. In fact, at the beginning of the twentieth century there was already an audience in Europe and the US that was fascinated with domestic and international public affairs, and the news agencies were trying to satisfy their demand by sending correspondents to remote parts of the world or buying news from local correspondents.12 Therefore, filming an important event such as Mustafa Kemal’s inspection of the İzmit Front, which may have caused a crucial change in international politics, could be of interest not only for the domestic, but also for the international news market. To give the exclusive to Kemal Film, the event was hid from the American cameramen.
9 Şener, Kurtuluş Savaşı ve Sinemamız., 23-24. 10 Ibid., 23. 11 Ibid., 23, 24, 25. 12 Oliver Boyd-Barrett and Terhi Rantanen, eds., The Globalization of News (London: Sage Publications, 1998).
51 The invention of cinema added a new dimension to conventional journalistic competition by enabling news reporting in motion pictures. Although the newspaper was still the most popular medium for the news report at the beginning of twentieth century, cinema gradually became a real competitor. In cinema’s initial years, the newspaper still had an important advantage over film.13 Since news could be transmitted very quickly by “the Victorian Internet,” the telegraph, newspapers were more up to date. Furthermore, producing news films was very complicated in the early years, demanding much time, effort and money.
Consequently, newsreels played only a supporting role in conveying news to the public, overshadowed by the newspapers and the radio. As Pierre Sorlin states, in Europe and the US, the newsreels projected on the cinema screens in major cities at the beginning of the month reached small towns only at the end of the month.14 By the time audiences saw the newsreels, they were already old news. Thus, newsreels mostly did not convey new information, but visualized events that were already known through other media.15 What made newsreels so important, however, was not their informative value but their perceived capacity to make the world visible in a direct and sensible way. Furthermore, by presenting events and people in motion to audiences of millions simultaneously, they helped to create a national consciousness and assisted in the emergence of new “imagined communities.”
Another important advantage of cinema over other media was that, by speaking a visual language, that is to say, the language of images, it allowed ordinary people to see distant events and famous men with their own eyes (and, by the end of the 1920s, also to hear them with their own ears). It was much easier for many people who were illiterate, semi-literate or did not have time to read to simply watch the news passing before their eyes in images. Thus, the news, reported through film, increasingly contributed to the participation of ordinary
13 Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time, 146. 14 Pierre Sorlin, “War and Cinema: Interpreting the Relationship,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television 14, (1994): 358. 15 Ibid.
52 people in politics.16 According to Pronay and Wenham, news displayed via films not only transmitted the information to the public, but also became a kind of informal educator for millions of people.17
In fact, present-day televised news can be seen as the successor of a long line of film genres, going back to newsreels, news films and actualities. 18 Just as televised news enjoys great popularity today, it was initially the news films and later newsreels that were popular among ordinary people. These visual news reports provided audiences with animated images of the current events reported in daily newspapers. From 1910 onwards, newsreels were displayed in cinemas weekly in Western Europe and the US.19 In the 1930s, in Britain, for instance, “newsreels already reached about the half of population, and were regularly seen by most working-class people under 30.”20 Thus, it is imaginable that the 1922 news film regarding Mustafa Kemal’s inspection of the İzmit Front was watched by hundreds, thousands or maybe even millions of people in Europe and the US.
Film as Evidence of the Past for the Future
Indeed, Gazi Mustafa Kemal Paşa'nın İzmit Cephesini Teftişi soon went beyond the country’s contested borders and would become known as the film that introduced Mustafa Kemal to the Western world.21 Mustafa Kemal, too, heard much about this film’s great success. After arriving in İzmir, he watched the film and expressed his satisfaction to its producers. According to Şener, he stated: “This is a document of great value for generations to come, who have not seen those days.”22 This anecdote suggests that Mustafa Kemal was well aware of the power of cinema to produce historical evidence, preserving and making ephemeral events repeatable for successive generations. In other words, by archiving the war visually, film could ensure that the efforts Mustafa Kemal made
16 Pronay and Wenham, The News and the Newsreel, 1. 17 Ibid. 18 Fielding, The American Newsreel, 4. 19 Betsy A. McLane, A New History of Documentary Film (London: Continuum, 2012), 8. 20 Pronay and Wenham, The News and the Newsreel, 1. 21 Şener, Kurtuluş Savaşı ve Sinemamız, 27. 22 In Turkish: “Bu, bugünleri görmeyen nesiller için büyük değeri olan bir belgedir.” Ibid., 27.
53 for the country would not be forgotten by younger generations. Even long after his death, film could immortalize him. After all, by representing him in motion (even if it was a past motion), film could create a feeling of reality for the audience; consequently, his persona could be experienced in the here and now by future audiences.
As Mustafa Kemal implicitly suggests, film could be employed for the education of future generations to create a national consciousness based on a shared memory. Having watched Ar’s film, Mustafa Kemal ordered it to be screened for the public gathered in front of the hotel at which he was staying. 23 His confirmation of the historical value of this film right after the war motivated filmmakers to begin to collect film fragments concerning the Turkish War of Independence.24 After all, in the future these film fragments could be used in fictional and non-fictional films regarding the national struggle and its leader.
The documentation of the war, however, had already begun before Mustafa Kemal’s inspection of the İzmit front. In 1922, Fuat Uzkınay handed over his position at Kemal Film to Cezmi Ar in Istanbul and moved to Anatolia in order to make several documentary films for Kemal Film.25 The year of Uzkınay’s move from Istanbul to Anatolia coincides with the start of film production by the national assembly’s Army Film Shooting Center. It is therefore highly probable that the center was either established by him or under his supervision.26 He might also have worked for both Kemal Film and the Army Film Shooting Center in this period. The production of the film Zafer Yollarında (Road to Victory) had
23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., 27-28. 25 The time given by Şener and Özön for Uzkınay’s move to Anatolia is contradictory. Şener suggests that Uzkınay moved to Anatolia at the beginning 1922 whereas Özön states Uzkınay moved to Anatolia around September. See Şener, Kurtuluş Savaşı ve Sinemamız, 29; Nijat Özön, İlk Türk Sinemacısı Fuat Uzkınay, 37. 26 In my correspondence with the Turkish General Staff, they confirmed the existence of the Army Film Shooting Center (T.B.M.M Ordu Film Çekme Merkezi (OFÇM)) between 1919 and 1922. According to their letter, the films belonging to this period do not identify a scenarist or a director. These duties were performed between 1915 and 1953 by the founder and head of the office, Lieutenant Fuat Uzkınay. Genelkurmay Başkanlığı, letter to author, July 16, 2012.
54 already been started by Uzkınay in 1922.27 To produce this film, he edited several pieces of already shot documentary film material together. When he was appointed as the head of the Army Film Shooting Center after the war, he extended the film by adding pieces from the center’s collection and other film materials gathered from different sources.28 This included fragments from three films shot by the center: The Incidents of Dumlupınar, How was İzmir Taken Back? and The Arrival and Reception of the Ghazi in İzmir.29 Other important material used for the film consisted of existing news films shot by Kemal Film during the war. 30 According to Şener, Mustafa Kemal, who was from the beginning interested in documentary films concerning the war, showed a particular interest in Zafer Yollarında (Road to Victory) and supported its production.31
When Reza Shah Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, visited Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1934, Road to Victory, which at the time consisted of three parts, was shown in a private film screening for the two statesmen.32 After the screening, Atatürk ordered its extension by Ali Fuat Erden, the commander of the War Colleges. A committee led by Erden and consisting of members including Nurettin Baransel, Fahri Belen and İsfendiyar Uzberk, the director of the army's Photo and Film Center, extended the film from three to twelve parts between 1932 and 1936.33 This film, now called İstiklâl (Independence), is likely the one in which Atatürk
27 The film, however, would only take its final shape in 1942. See Şener, Kurtuluş Savaşı ve Sinemamız, 28-29. According to Burçak Evren, Uzkınay produced the film Zafer Yollarında for Kemal Film. Burçak Evren, İlk Türk Filmleri (Es Yayınları: İstanbul, 2006), 54. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid., 29-30. 30 Ibid., 30. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. Based on Kemal Film’s owner Şakir Seden’s account, Özön suggest that many films were produced by the short cooperation between Kemal Film and The Disabled Veterans Association during the armistice years. Although some of these films were shot by Kemal Film alone, they were all confiscated by the army’s cinema department on the grounds that they belonged to The Disabled Veterans Association. He further claims that this material was used in the making of the film İstiklâl (Independence), produced by Uzkınay. See Nijat Özön, İlk Türk Sinemacısı Fuat Uzkınay, 39. This event also points to the continuity between the Ottoman and the Turkish Republic’s army, for the cameras of the association originally belonged to the Central Army Office of Cinema of the Ottoman army.
55 wanted to perform personally.34 Upon Atatürk’s request, some additional staged war scenes were shot after the war and added to the film.35
Although it might seem strange to a contemporary reader, the staging of scenes was actually a common practice in this period.36 As Jay Winter and Samual Hynes state, “most visual and literary accounts of the First World War were produced more than ten years after the Armistice.”37 An important reason for this was the novelty of the medium. The film camera was a new medium of war that attracted enemy fire.38 Therefore, cameramen mostly were not allowed to be on the front lines by military authorities.39 Moreover, unlike contemporary film technologies, the cinematography equipment of the time was not well suited to the conditions of war. They were heavy and cumbersome. Even if a cameraman managed to record a few pictures of war after putting his life at risk, the images were mostly poor in quality. The coverage that does exist was produced mostly after the war.40 In a few cases, it was produced during the war, but in a staged setting behind the front lines or elsewhere, sometimes in the same week or month as the events portrayed. Thus, the First World War was not well captured directly on film.
The deliberate efforts made to produce a film of the War of Independence indicate that Atatürk and his followers did not use film only to document, but also to create a story of what “really” happened. By selectively adding original war scenes and cutting others, and by filming extra war scenes after the fact, they retrospectively created a cinematic narrative that, far from providing a direct window into the events, was a construction.
34 As noted in my Introduction, according to Şener, in 1937, during the Thracian maneuvers, Atatürk asked Baransel Pasha whether the film had been completed and, upon hearing that it had not, because of the scenes showing him were mostly composed of motionless images, Atatürk said that he could personally perform in it if necessary. See Şener, Kurtuluş Savaşı ve Sinemamız, 31-32. 35 Ibid., 32. 36 Frank Van Vree, “The Imagery of War: Screening the Battlefield in the Twentieth Century” (Paper presented, Cultures of War and Peace, Peace Palace, The Hague, June 15th 2013). 37 Sorlin, “War and Cinema,” 361. 38 Fielding, The American Newsreel, 115, 125. 39 Ibid., 125. 40 Ibid., 116.
56 This, however, does not only apply to films as historical documents, but to historical writings in general. The French philosopher Paul Ricoeur suggests that all historical writings, including those that criticize narrative history, are constructed in some way in narrative form.41 Similarly, Hayden White, in his work Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe, has shown that historians do not simply represent events how they really were (“wie es eigentlich gewesen”),42 but create a narrative form out of them by organizing them in a certain order, including and excluding some events, and emphasizing some and downplaying others. 43 According to White, in constructing their narratives, historians are often unconsciously influenced by literary tropes such as irony, synecdoche, metaphor and metonymy. Thus, the historical writings of four great historians in the nineteenth century – Michelet, Ranke, Tocqueville and Burckhardt – follow four basic plots: those of romance, comedy, tragedy and satire, respectively.44
In line with White’s argument, I would suggest that at some point after their original recording, audiovisual documents must also be edited and organized by a director in order to create a meaningful (historical) narrative. Thus, the films made of the War of Independence are important to look at not so much for their documentary value (although they do offer some valuable insights into what this particular period looked like), but primarily for the way in which they construct a narrative and communicate a particular point of view on the past.
For the nationalists, film was not only an important medium for self- representation, but was also used to represent the alleged brutalities of their enemies. When the Greek army was retreating from Anatolia, the Army Shooting Center shadowed it in order to document the alleged atrocities of the Greek forces against the Muslim population in Anatolia.45 Some of the recorded scenes
41 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol.1, trans. K. McLaughlin and D. Dellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 91-174. 42 This was a maxim proposed by the famous German historian Leopold von Ranke. 43 Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975). 44 Ibid., 135-264. 45 Özön, Türk Sineması Tarihi, 70.
57 would be used in Zafer Yollarında (Road to Victory) and its later incarnation İstiklâl (Independence). Although we do not know whether Zafer Yollarında received a public screening for propaganda purposes during the war, we know how the nationalists employed the film after the war. Significantly, with regard to its post-war use, the boundary between the use of film as a form of historical record and as a propaganda tool is blurred.
This is because when an event was filmed in the war, it was commonly filmed to produce visual evidence for the future. However, it was not always clear how close or distant this future would be. Whether or not a film was screened immediately depended on several factors, such as the selection criteria of agents, the material conditions and technical issues. Therefore, I would suggest that propaganda and archiving activities in the context of the Turkish War of Independence should not be seen as two separate and distinct activities, but as intertwined and overlapping.
The nationalists’ efforts to document the war did not merely serve to preserve the events of the past. In his discussion on archive, Jacques Derrida shows that archiving is not a simple activity that is conducted to preserve the past, but instead serves to create it. The way in which the archivable content is selected, stored, preserved or excluded by certain power structures determines the very existence of the content, not only in the past but also in the future. Derrida states:
the archive […] is not only the place for stocking and for conserving an achievable content of the past which would exist in any case, such as, without the archive, one still believes it was or will have been. No, the technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure of the achievable content even in its very coming into existence and in its relationship to the future. The archivization produces as much as it records the event.46
46 Jacques Derrida, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,” trans. Eric Prenowitz, Diacritics, 25, no. 2 (1995): 17, accessed September 28, 2014, doi: 10.2307/465144.
58 Furthermore, Derrida indicates that the administrators of the archives, the so- called “archons,” not only constitute the past but also, through their authority, control access to the past. Far from engaging in a neutral activity of gathering documents, through the inclusion or exclusion of certain documents they determine what can be said about the past in future. Similarly, in his book The Archeology of Knowledge, Foucault conceptualizes the term “archive” not as a physical institution where official documents are kept, but rather as the set of all statements that limits, governs and determines what can be said, including about the past.47 He writes:
The archive is first the law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events. But the archive is also that which determines that all these things said do not accumulate endlessly in an amorphous mass, nor are they inscribed in an unbroken linearity, nor do they disappear at the mercy of chance external accidents; but they are grouped together in distinct figures, composed together in accordance with multiple relations, maintained or blurred in accordance with specific regularities;48
For Foucault, the archive can never provide a neutral, unmediated view on the past, but is always constituted by certain power structures, which order, construct, limit and delimit our knowledge about the past. He states:
It is obvious that the archive of a society, a culture, or a civilization cannot be described exhaustively; or even, no doubt, the archive of a whole period. On the other hand, it is not possible for us to describe our own archive, since it is from within these rules that we speak [...] It emerges in fragments, regions, and levels, more fully, no doubt, and with greater sharpness, the greater the time that separates us from it: at most, were it not for the rarity of the
47 Michel Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Routledge, 2002), 145. 48 Ibid., 145-146.
59 documents, the greater chronological distance would be necessary to analyze it.49
Nevertheless, according to Foucault, by analyzing the archive of a society, a culture or a civilization, one can still deduce what could be said, by whom and with what authority at a particular moment in history.50 Thus, if we look at the films produced by the nationalists in the 1920-1930s, we cannot obtain an objective picture of what really happened at that time, but we can deduce the statements and discourses that governed this period. Despite their limitations in terms of providing an objective picture, tracing the nationalists’ archiving activities in this period indicates that they assigned considerable importance to producing visual evidence to influence public opinion in the present and the future. By constructing a visual archive of the War of Independence, they not only preserved the past, but also created it.
The archiving activities in this period, however, are not limited to the nationalists, as there was also foreign interest in filming the war. As mentioned above, some American filmmakers came to shoot the war, but it is not known whether they were able to actually do so. We do know, however, that when the American filmmaker Louis de Rochemont was still an officer in the US navy, he filmed Mustafa Kemal’s recapture of İzmir and the great fire of İzmir in 1922.51 According to American communications scholar Raymond Fielding, Rochemont’s newsreel material on Mustafa Kemal was commercially released.52 In addition, Erman Şener, in his book Kurtuluş Savaşı ve Sinemamız (The Independence War and Our Cinema) mentions a film shot by Italians regarding the recapture of İzmir. 53 In the rest of this chapter, I will discuss three specific films featuring Mustafa Kemal from this period in order to understand in more detail how they not only reflected but also constructed the reality they show.
49 Ibid., 146-147. 50 Ibid., 142-148. 51 Fielding, Raymond, The March of Time, 1935-1951 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 30. 52 Ibid. 53 Şener mentions that another film, by an unknown producer, has recently appeared showing Mustafa Kemal after his victory in the Battle of Dumlupınar on 30 August 1922. See Şener, Kurtuluş Savaşı ve Sinemamız, 26.
60 Mustapha Kemel (1920-1929)
In my research, I found a film and some footage in the British Pathé archives relating to Atatürk in this specific period. In the footage, entitled Mustapha Kemel (1920-1929),54 we can see Mustafa Kemal in military uniform, wearing a kalpak (a lamb’s fur cap), which became a symbol of the nationalists during the war, while walking and saluting a row of Turkish men, with a Turkish flag waving in the background. He is followed by a group of men, including eminent commanders of the Turkish War of Independence, of whom I could recognize Fevzi Pasha (Çakmak), Nureddin İbrahim Pasha (a.k.a. Sakallı [Bearded] Nureddin) and Kâzım Pasha (Karabekir), all in military uniform and donning kalpaks.
Although the footage is assigned to the period between 1920 and 1929 in the British Pathé film archives, I believe that it must have been shot sometime between 1920 and 1923. I draw this conclusion for two reasons; firstly, because of Mustafa Kemal’s military uniform, which he is known to have worn until he became the president of the Turkish Republic on 29 September 1923.55 Secondly, because of the hats that Mustafa Kemal and his retinue wear.
During the War of Independence, the nationalists made symbolic use of hats more than of any other piece of clothing. By wearing kalpaks they distinguished themselves from agents of the sultan’s government in Istanbul, who were associated with the traditional fez. 56 Thus, specific types of hats gradually acquired political meaning, distinguishing between two opposing political powers, one based in Istanbul and represented by the sultan, the other based in Ankara and represented by Mustafa Kemal. During the war, Mustafa Kemal wore
54 British Pathé, Mustapha Kemel, Pathé News, Audiovisual file, 1920 – 1929, 20 sec., accessed May 3, 2014. http://www.britishpathe.com/video/mustapha-kemel. 55 After 1923, Mustafa Kemal wore his military uniform only for very special occasions, such as when directing military maneuvers in Ankara in 1926, when posing for a photographer and on a couple of other occasions. See Metin Toker, “Atatürk ve Barış,” Atam.gov.tr, accessed May 3, 2014, http://www.atam.gov.tr/dergi/sayi-09/ataturk-ve-baris-2. 56 Since 1909, the Ottoman military had donned the kalpak instead of the red fez, especially on ceremonial occasions. The kalpak would function as a sign of recognition for Ottoman officials until the end of the Turkish War of Independence. See Klaus Kreiser, Atatürk: Eine Biographie (München: Verlag C. H. Beck, 2008), 62, 239.
61 a kalpak even when he was in civilian dress. Other irregular militia forces (Kuva- yı Milliye) in Anatolia followed Mustafa Kemal’s example, so the kalpak became a kind of symbol of those who supported the nationalist government in Ankara.57
Mustapha Kemel (1920-1929) continues by showing black-clad soldiers wearing ammunition belts over their shoulders and dark turbans tied at the side. To understand this film better, we first need to explore who these soldiers were and what their relationship was to Mustafa Kemal. The soldiers in the footage are part of the regiment of Topal (Lame) Osman, who served as Mustafa Kemal’s personal bodyguard during the Turkish War of Independence. Lame Osman was a veteran of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and the leader of a Muslim band (çete) in Giresun, which was notoriously known for its brutality.58 He was called Lame Osman due to an injury to his knee sustained during the Balkan War, in which he participated as a volunteer.59 He also fought against the Russians during the First World War and was deployed to capture runaways from the Ottoman army.60
With the loss of the First World War, the political tension between the local non- Muslim and Muslim communities had mounted, particularly in coastal towns of the Black Sea such as Samsun and Giresun, where there were substantial Greek populations. The Giresun branch of the Trabzon Society for the Defense of National Rights employed Lame Osman and his Laz irregulars against the Greeks and Armenians, 61 who wanted to separate the “Pontic Coast” from the Ottoman Empire.62 Significantly, Lame Osman repeatedly exceeded his orders to terrorize communities, primarily the Greeks and the Armenians, but also the local Muslim population, which tried to oppose him.63
57 It should be mentioned that although the kalpak increasingly became a symbol of the nationalists during the Turkish War of Independence, not everyone followed this fashion. In the first Grand National Assembly, for instance, the fez was still widespread among the members. See Toktamış Ateş, Türk Devrim Tarihi (İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2010), 255. 58 Mango, Atatürk, 213. 59 Kreiser, Atatürk, 137. 60 Mango, Atatürk, 213. 61 Ibid. See also Kreiser, Atatürk, 137-138. 62 The Laz are an ethnic group, one of the native populations of the Black Sea coastal regions of Turkey and Georgia. They used to be Christians, but under Ottoman rule in the 16th century, the majority of them converted to Islam. See also Kreiser, Atatürk, 137-138. 63 Andrew Mango, Atatürk (London: John Murray, 2004), 212-213.
62 When armed resistance began against the Allied forces on the Western Front and elsewhere, the commanders of the National Movement collaborated with local Muslim bands in order to disrupt the advance of the Allied forces through guerilla warfare. Mustafa Kemal attached great importance to incorporating these scattered irregular bands, which would later be called the Kuvâ-yı Milliye (National Forces), into the regular army that he was establishing in Ankara. One of these units was Lame Osman’s band.64
The band terrorized the local population of the Black Sea coast until Mustafa Kemal called them to Ankara, where they would serve as his personal bodyguard.65 But Lame Osman did not calm down in Ankara, either. When, for instance, the Alewite Kurdish Koçgiri tribe rebelled against the Ankara government, demanding an autonomous province in Dersim, the government sent a force led by Bearded Nureddin Pasha to suppress the rebels. It included Lame Osman’s Laz irregulars, who brutally crushed the rebels on 24 April 1921.66
Lame Osman was also implicated in another controversy, which began with an angry debate between Mustafa Kemal and Ali Şükrü at the assembly on 6 March 1923. Opposition politicians led by Ali Şükrü had sharply criticized Mustafa Kemal and İsmet Pasha’s politics during the Lausanne negotiations and accused them of betraying national interests. The angry debate almost ended in a shooting duel between Mustafa Kemal’s followers and the opponents.67 A few days after this event, Ali Şükrü was seen for the last time in the assembly on 26 March and subsequently disappeared.
His disappearance worried his friends, who brought the issue to the assembly three days after, demanding a government inquiry, to which Mustafa Kemal assented.68 The inquiry led to the discovery of Ali Şükrü’s body in a grave near
64 Ibid., 227. 65 Ibid., 284. 66 Ibid., 330. 67 Ibid., 379. 68 Ibid., 381.
63 Lame Osman’s house and concluded that Lame Osman and his men had murdered and buried him there.69 A warrant for their arrest was issued by Mustafa Kemal on 31 March 1923.70 When Lame Osman heard that government battalion was searching for him, he knew that this was only possible with Mustafa Kemal’s authorization. Meanwhile, to insure his own security, Mustafa Kemal had to leave his villa in Çankaya.
The question of how this happened has become a matter of huge controversy in Turkey in recent years due to a claim made by Turkish author İpek Çalışlar. In her national bestseller Latife Hanım (2006),71 Çalışlar claims that Lame Osman and his men had already surrounded the villa when Mustafa Kemal wanted to escape. Based on Lâtife’s sister Vehice İlmen’s grandson Mehmet Sadık Öke’s account, Çalışlar tells the story as follows.72 Surrounded by Lame Osman’s band, Mustafa Kemal’s life was in danger. Hostage negotiations between Lame Osman’s band and those inside the villa had started. As was customary, women and children were the first to be allowed to leave. The plan was for Mustafa Kemal to disguise himself in order to leave with them. But someone had to stay at the villa in his place, so as not to create any suspicion.
Çalışlar asserts that Lâtife offered to stay at the house in order to distract the band outside.73 Although Mustafa Kemal rejected Lâtife’s offer in strong terms, she did not listen, putting on his kalpak and a military cloak to take his place. Lâtife’s sister Vehice brought Mustafa Kemal a chador to enable him to pass Lame Osman’s men. Lâtife then stood in front of a window, mimicking his silhouette and giving the impression that he was still in the villa. According to Çalışlar, Mustafa Kemal managed to escape death thanks to Lâtife’s brilliant idea and courage. When Lame Osman and his men entered the villa eventually, they saw that Mustafa Kemal had escaped. They ransacked the place and manhandled Lâtife. Meanwhile, the government battalion surrounded Lame Osman’s band. 74
69 Ibid., 381-382. 70 Ibid., 382. 71 İpek Çalışlar, Latife Hanım (İstanbul: Everest Yayınları, 2011). 72 Ibid., 155. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid.
64 Although Çalışlar is convinced of the truthfulness of her story, invoking the memoirs of Lâtife’s sister Vecihe İlmen, who was present in the villa, as evidence, her account was not acceptable for the state as the defender of the official historiography. In fact, because of the passage in which she describes Atatürk escaping in the guise of a woman, she was made to stand trial for “insulting the memory of Atatürk through the press” (Law 5816) in 2006.75 Although she was acquitted, the discussion about the passage in her book continued. Based on it, a film called Latife Hanım was produced, which also included this highly controversial scene. Like the book, the film challenged the myth of Atatürk by attacking several of its components, including his masculinity, authority and bravery, as well as his intelligence, foresight and secularity.
The search for Lame Osman and his men ended in a shootout in which most of them were killed; Osman himself was mortally wounded and a few survivors were taken in for questioning.76 The official explanation for Ali Şükrü’s murder that emerged from this was that Lame Osman had killed him at his own initiative because he was standing in his patron’s way by opposing his policies. For many, however, this was hard to believe. At the same time, it was also hard to believe that, despite his dislike for Ali Şükrü and being Lame Osman’s patron, Mustafa Kemal was behind the plot, for two reasons. Firstly, if it had been Mustafa Kemal, he would have lost all credibility as the president of the National Assembly. Secondly, the fact that he supported the inquiry without any hesitation suggests he was not involved in the plot.
According to Andrew Mango, a biographer of Atatürk, the plot was most probably planned by junior officers who joined the ranks of Mustafa Kemal’s party and “were ready to advance his cause and their own interests by eliminating those who stood in their way.”77 In doing so, they had killed two birds with one stone. The preeminent speaker of the opposition had been silenced and the opposition intimidated. Furthermore, the last unit of the
75 Ibid., IX-X. See also Radikal com.tr, “İpek Çalışlar'a 'Latife' davası,” last modified August 19, 2006, http://www.radikal.com.tr/haber.php?haberno=196265. 76 Mango, Atatürk, 382. 77 Ibid., 383.
65 irregulars, who had taken part in brutal killings of Greeks, Armenians and Muslim opponents, had been eliminated, conveying the message that there was no longer a place for such unruly men in the new order.78 According to Mango, it would not have been necessary to inform Mustafa Kemal of the plot, as he would benefit from it most if he did not know anything about it.79
However, it is certain that Mustafa Kemal did not mourn Ali Şükrü’s death. What worried him more than the murder was the possible exploitation of this issue by the opposition.80 To refresh the assembly’s confidence in him, he held new elections.81 Nevertheless, even after the murder issue had been resolved, he and his supporters did their best to keep it under wraps. In his famous six-day speech (Nutuk), held between 15 and 20 October 1927 at the General Congress of the Republican Party, Mustafa Kemal did not say anything about the murder, nor did he mention Lame Osman as the murderer.82 Despite these efforts, this unfortunate incident has never been entirely forgotten; Lame Osman is still commemorated as a national hero by the nationalists, with a statue erected in his hometown Giresun in 2008, while Ali Şükrü was given a humble memorial on his grave in his hometown Trabzon.83 Both are also remembered in films such as Latife Hanım (2006) and Atatürk'ün Fedaisi Topal Osman (The Bodyguard of Atatürk Lame Osman, 2013).
Returning to the film at hand, since most of the black-clad warriors shown in it were killed in the shootout, Mustapha Kemel (1920-1929) cannot have been made any later than March 1923.84 This year also marked an important change in Mustafa Kemal’s image, reflected in his dress style. After being elected president of the Turkish Republic, he would not wear his military uniform
78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid., 384. 82 Ibid., 383. 83 Ibid., 384. See for the erection of Topal Osman’s statue in Giresun: Ufuk Kekül, “ Topal Osman'ın heykeli dikildi,” Kentselhaber.com, last modified August 08, 2004, http://www.kentselhaber.com/V2/News/90518/Topal-Osman-in-heykeli-dikildi. 84 Unless the scenes of Mustafa Kemal and Topal Osman’s irregulars were shot separately and put together later, but even then the footage could most probably not have been shot after 1923.
66 anymore but dress only in civilian, Western-style clothes. Hence, his heroic warrior image would turn into the image of a progressive civilian leader.
Mustapha Kemal (1923)
The film found in the British Pathé film archives from this period is called Mustapha Kemal (1923).85 It is a silent cinema newsreel, or as referred to by Pathé an animated gazette.86 It starts with the title of Angora (Ankara) written at the top of the screen and continues by announcing “Mustapha Kemal. Turkey's ‘Strong Man’ on whose action peace or war depends in the Near East.” At the end of the film, “Pathé Gazette” appears on screen. In the first scene of the film, Mustafa Kemal, in his military uniform, an overcoat and his kalpak, salutes a row of soldiers and then walks with some other commanders of the War of Independence behind him, of whom Fevzi Pasha (on his right) and Bearded Nureddin Pasha (on his left) could be recognized.
In the next scene, the commanders of the Independence War, in military uniforms and wearing kalpaks, line up and pose for the camera. The camera pans across the commanders, of which I could again identify Bearded Nureddin Pasha, this time standing on Mustafa Kemal’s right, Kâzım Pasha, on his left, and Fevzi Pasha, standing next to Kâzım Pasha. Here, it should be mentioned that although a camera pan is nothing special to our contemporary eyes, as Doane notes, it was an important feature of filming in cinema’s earlier days that linked to the idea of the “real.” The temporality of the camera pan gave films a feeling of authenticity and actuality, providing an enhanced feeling of “being there” at the actual event.87 Thus, what the film purported to display to its audiences was an unmediated “real” event, evidenced by the technique of the camera pan.
85 British Pathé, Mustapha Kemal (1923), Pathé Gazette, Audiovisual file, 1923, 29 sec., accessed May 3, 2014. http://www.britishpathe.com/video/mustapha-kemal/query/Mustapha+Kemal. 86 In fact, another name for early cinema was “visual newspaper.” See Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time, 146. 87 Ibid., 162.
67 There is an interesting detail in this film. Unlike the other officials shown, Mustafa Kemal has his right hand in the overcoat of his uniform in a Napoleonic gesture. The camera stops on Mustafa Kemal and moves in closely; he continues to pose in the Napoleonic manner and looks very briefly at the camera. In this way, the film draws attention to the uniqueness and superiority of Mustafa Kemal over the other military officers. Mustafa Kemal’s “hand-in-overcoat” gesture was not a very common gesture for Ottoman officials to make. So why and for whom is he making it?
Significantly, this gesture was common for European or American gentlemen and frequently appears in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western portraiture.88 One can also see this gesture in photographs of military men, businessmen and politicians from Europe and the US in the late nineteenth century. In her article on the “hand-in-waistcoat” portrait type, Arline Meyer suggests that the gesture was recognized as indicating, “manly boldness tempered with modesty” in François Nivelon’s Book of Genteel Behaviour, published in 1738.89
Although it was a commonly used portrait convention in Western art – particularly in the English and French contexts – the gesture has become closely associated with Napoleon.90 This was partly because of the French painter Jacques-Louis David, who turned his patron’s gesture into an indelible military emblem in his famous portrait of 1812, The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries. 91 After Napoleon, many generals and rulers in the Western world adopted this gesture and were portrayed in paintings and photography making it.92
I want to suggest that, by adopting this gesture on film, Mustafa Kemal sought to associate his career with a well-known historical model and to communicate his self-representation to a Western audience. Whether or not foreign audiences
88 Arline Meyer, “Re-dressing Classical Statuary: The Eighteenth-Century "Hand-in-Waistcoat" Portrait,” The Art Bulletin, 77, no. 1 (1995): 45-63, accessed January 20, 2016, doi 10.2307/3046079. 89 Ibid., 53. 90 Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 70, 71, 73. 91 Burke, Eyewitnessing, 70; Meyer, “Re-dressing Classical Statuary,” 63. 92 Ibid., 73.
68 were indeed convinced by the strong military image Mustafa Kemal presented in this newsreel, Pathé Gazette’s title “Mustapha Kemal. Turkey's ‘Strong Man’ on whose action peace or war depends in Near East” does suggest some success in impressing foreign news agencies. Pointing to his ambitions, Mustafa Kemal’s body language also heralded a political change; the nationalists were rising to power and their leader was repositioning Turkey on the geopolitical stage, taking rulers of “Western civilization,” such as Napoleon, as his model.
Another interesting detail in the film is that all commanders of the Turkish War of Independence, including Mustafa Kemal, are clean-shaven except for their moustaches; only Bearded Nureddin Pasha, as his name suggests, sports a beard. What they all have in common, however, is their kalpaks. In fact, the kalpak fashion continued among the nationalists even after the war until Mustafa Kemal introduced the hat reform in 1925. 93 Thus, when the armed struggle for independence ended and the diplomatic struggle began, the Turkish delegation, led by İsmet Pasha, went to the Conference of Lausanne (1922-1923) wearing kalpaks. However, after signing the Treaty of Lausanne on 24 July 1923, which certified the birth of a new independent Turkish state at an international level, İsmet Pasha left the conference wearing a top hat.94 Although this change did not attract much attention at the time, retrospectively it can be interpreted as an early sign of the changes that would take place in the newly founded, modern Turkish Republic, which I will discuss in detail in Chapter 4.
The Reception of the Lausanne Peace Committee (1923)
When the Turkish delegation returned home from Lausanne, high-ranking officials and the public convened at the Çatalca (Chataldja) railway station to
93 On 25 November 1925, the Turkish National Assembly passed the hat law (Şapka İktisası Hakkında Kanun), which introduced the use of a Western-style hat (şapka) in place of the fez and other forms of traditional headdress. Before the passing of the law, between 23 and 31 August, Mustafa Kemal visited the towns of Kastamonu and İnebolu, where he, wearing a Panama hat, introduced the upcoming hat reform to the public. See Ayten Sezen Arığ, Atatürk Türkiye’sinde Kılık Kıyafette Çağdaşlaşma (Ankara: Siyasal Kitabevi, 2007), 37-41; Utkan Kocatürk, Doğumundan Ölümüne Kadar Kaynakçalı Atatürk Günlüğü (Ankara: Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi, 2007), 376-378. 94 Sevtap Demirci, Belgelerle Lozan Taktik - Stratejik - Diplomatik Mücadele 1922-1923, çeviren Mehmet Moralı (İstanbul: Alfa Yayınları, 2011), 272.
69 welcome them. The film that was made of this event, called Lozan Sulh Heyetinin Karşılanması (The Reception of the Lausanne Peace Committee, 1923) shows what the reception looked like.95 We see the public await the committee in front of the railway station. A group of children, boys and girls, dressed up in folkloric costumes and soldier uniforms, carry small signs on their chests, on some of which are written, in Arabic letters, the names of cities in Turkey: İzmir, Kars, Erzurum.96 Each of the children wears a different folkloric costume, representing their respective cities.
Together with the little soldiers, the children in folkloric costume surround a girl who is standing above the others and is dressed differently. She is in a white, winged costume and wears a laurel wreath on her head with an upside down crescent in the middle, a symbol of Islam.97 She holds a big flower bouquet in her hand, probably to be given to the leader of the victorious Lausanne Peace delegation, İsmet Pasha. Together, the children constitute an interesting mise- en-scène for the camera. In the next scene, Mustafa Kemal, his wife Lâtife, İsmet Pasha and a retinue consisting of politicians, soldiers and an imam are walking towards the camera. In another scene, the camera focuses on Lâtife, İsmet Pasha and Mustafa Kemal standing in front of the state dignitaries.
What does this film tell us about the nationalists’ worldview? To interpret this film, I will follow Robert Darnton’s suggestion, discussed in my Introduction, “to
95 Lozan Sulh Heyetinin Karşılanması, Turkish Film & TV Institute, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, 35 mm. Nitrate Film, 1923, 4 min. 30 sec. 96 Although the film does not reveal all the names, Avcı states that other place names were also written on the signs worn by the boys and girls in the welcoming ceremony, including “Birinci İnönü,” “İkinci İnönü,” “İstanbul,” “Sivas,” “Bursa,” “Trakya,” “Ankara,” “Sakarya,” “Afyonkarahisar,” “Dumlupınar” and “Eskişehir.” “Zafer-i Milli” (National Victory) was also on the signs. See Cemal Avcı, “İsmet İnönü'nün Lozan Dönüşü ve Demeçleri (10 Ağustos 1923—23 Ağustos 1923),” Ankara Üniversitesi Türk İnkılâp Tarihi Enstitüsü Atatürk Yolu Dergisi, 3, no: 12 (1993): 344. 97 The crescent was used as a religious symbol by ancient civilizations in the Middle East. The Byzantine Empire also employed it as a political, military and religious symbol. It was long believed that the Ottoman Turks adopted the crescent for their own flags after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, but they were actually already using the crescent a century before during the reign of Sultan Orhan (1326–62). Although it is hard to determine its precise origin, the symbol became increasingly associated with the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic world. Today, the crescent is used as a symbol on national flags by many countries where Islam is the major religion, including Turkey, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Malaysia, Pakistan and Tunisia. See Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, “Crescent,” accessed May 3, 2014, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/142628/crescent.
70 search for opacity in texts.”98 According to Darnton, when we come across something in a document, such as a joke, a ritual or a poem, which seems completely inconceivable to us, we might be on to something that may serve as a valid point of entry into an alien system of meaning.99
Being from Turkey, the Ottoman culture represented in the film is not totally alien to me. I can recognize several cultural patterns in the film, such as the welcome ceremony as well as the traditional dress style of the men in fezzes and kalpaks, the women in headscarves and the young boys and girls in folkloric costumes. Nevertheless, one element is opaque to me and not very typical of a traditional welcoming ceremony in Turkish-Ottoman culture. This element is the girl in the white, winged costume standing above the others, to whom the camera pays particular attention. What does she symbolize and, more importantly, what kind of message were the nationalists conveying through her prominent inclusion in the film?
The use of little girls or women as allegorical figures in public festivals in the Ottoman context goes back to the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. When the Young Turks revolted against Sultan Abdul Hamid II’s “despotic” regime in order to restore the constitution of 1876, they began to use new symbols to represent the new “liberal” regime. The Young Turk movement, which Mustafa Kemal was a member of, was highly influenced by the French Revolution (1789). Inspired by the French Revolutionary figure of Marianne, which symbolized reason and liberty, the Young Turks and their supporters created their own “Ottoman Marianne” to represent liberty (hürriyet).100
In contrast to the old “despotic” male Sultan, “liberty” was depicted as a young female figure in most printed matter at the time. 101 The allegory mostly
98 Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 262. 99 Ibid., 5. 100 Günhan Börekçi, “The Ottomans and the French Revolution: Popular images of “Liberty- Equality-Fraternity” in the late Ottoman Iconography, 1908-1912” (master’s thesis, Boğaziçi University, 1999), 45. 101 Ibid., 42.
71 appeared in the form of a little girl or a young woman, but always indicated a break with the old regime. At the same time, by using this figure in the Ottoman press as well as in public festivals, the Young Turks showed that the new regime was continuing the liberal tradition of the French Revolution. In the parade held in Monastir’s Shirok Street after the revolution, for instance, the “freedom coach” carried five girls dressed in white costumes, symbolizing liberty.102 The girls were also filmed and photographed by the Manaki brothers, showing that this was a staged spectacle designed to convey a message to the Western world.103 As the representation of the female liberty figure changed in the Ottoman press and the figure appeared under different names, such as, Turkey, Vatan (Motherland), Efkar-ı Umumiye (Public Opinion) and Meşrutiyet (Constitutionalism),104 its reception by the public also changed. In some cases, especially when the figure had wings, it was interpreted as an angel105 or a fairy.
According to Avcı, for instance, the girl, who appears in the welcoming ceremony of the Lausanne Committee, represents sulh perisi (The Fairy of Peace).106 Nevertheless, when we look at her costume closely, we see something that is very familiar to us, namely a figure from Greco-Roman mythology. In fact, the little girl is dressed up as the Roman goddess Victoria (the Greek equivalent of which is Nike).107 In ancient Greece and Rome, victory was personified as a winged, female figure. Victoria was the messenger of the gods, an angel or a goddess, depending on the myth, “who descended to earth to crown the victor in a contest of arms, athletics or poetry.”108 The winged Roman image of Victoria was commonly represented in the Renaissance as granting a laurel crown or a
102 Saadet Özen, “Rethinking the Young Turk Revolution: Manaki Brothers’ Still and Moving Images” (master’s thesis, Bogaziçi University, 2010), 95. 103 Ibid., 94-96. 104 Börekçi,“The Ottomans and the French Revolution,” 42-43. 105 For an interpretation of the figure as the Angel of Liberty see ibid., 55. 106 Avcı, “İsmet İnönü'nün Lozan Dönüşü ve Demeçleri,” 344. 107 Klaus Kreiser writes about an allegorical woman figure used on a poster in the 1920s that stood for Misak-ı Millî (National Pact). I have seen this allegory on various occasions, but, unlike the little girl in the film, it did not have wings and was represented by an older female figure. Thus, although there are similarities between these two figures, I believe that they made references to different concepts. See Kreiser, Atatürk 16. 108 James A. Hall, Hall's Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art (London: John Murray, 1991), 321.
72 palm branch to the victorious.109 Victoria has inspired several works of art in the Western context, including the Siegessäule (The Victory Column) in Berlin and the Victoria Memorial in London. As the film shows, she also inspired the little girl figure in the welcoming ceremony. But how does a goddess of victory from Western culture fit into the center of an Ottoman crowd?
To understand this, we should go back to the final years of the Ottoman Empire. The nationalists had won the war, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey had decided to abolish the sultanate on 1 November 1922 and on 17 November the last Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed VI, was compelled to leave the country. With the abolishment of the sultanate, the nationalist government in Ankara stood as the supreme and sole representative of Turkey in the international arena. Although the Grand Turkish National Assembly had not yet declared the new regime, backstage it was already being discussed that the new state form would be a republic.
Meanwhile, on 20 November 1922, negotiations had started at the Conference of Lausanne between Turkey and the Allied states. Due to disagreements between the parties, they broke up once on 4 February 1923, but continued again on 23 April 1923. The negotiations would end on 24 July 1923 and the new republic would be declared on 29 October 1923. In the meantime, the nationalists began to convey implicit messages about the upcoming changes to the Turkish cultural identity that would be propagated by the new regime. The fedora and top hat worn by İsmet Pasha during the conference can be interpreted as early signs of these imminent changes. And so can the goddess of victory shown in The Reception of the Lausanne Peace Committee.
At the first, most obvious level of representation, the little girl in the goddess of victory costume signifies the victory won by the nationalist government in Lausanne and the peace they brought to their country after a long and brutal war. Nevertheless, I will go further and try to understand other connotations of this symbol as well. The allegory of the goddess of victory, which has its roots in
109 Ibid.
73 ancient Greek and Roman cultures, was most probably not understandable for much of the public gathered at the Çatalca railway station, so it was clearly not meant for their eyes alone.
One could surmise that it was aimed at the victorious İsmet Pasha and the Turkish delegation, who were cultured enough to understand its meaning. While this may have been the case, celebrating public festivals or celebrations with a Western symbol had not been a common practice among the Ottomans before the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. In fact, the Young Turks had started this invented tradition; however, as noted earlier, the girls they used to symbolize “liberty” in public festivals or ceremonies did not have wings and resembled the French Marianne or goddess of liberty. The nationalists, on the other hand, seem to have continued the tradition of the Young Turks of using allegorical figures from Western civilization, but with some adjustments, such as the addition of wings, making them look like the goddess of victory, which not only fit the occasion better but also helped the new government to distinguish itself from the previous one.
Therefore, I argue that with this allegory the nationalists were primarily aiming to convey to “Western civilization” the message: our new government, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, shares the same cultural values with you. To transmit this message, there could not be a more appropriate medium than film, not only because film itself was a sign of Western modernity that could easily appeal to Western audiences, but also because it was widely believed at the time that film was a transparent medium that could not lie and displayed only what was actually happening.110 Thus, the Western symbol captured on film conveyed the reality of its message, confirming that this was not just an ideological maneuver.
Unlike the Ottoman government, which represented “Islamic civilization” and therefore frequently employed and promoted Islamic symbols in governing its subjects, Mustafa Kemal and his followers were gradually shifting the cultural
110 Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time, 156.
74 axis of Turkey from Islamic to common symbols of “Western civilization,” which claimed to have its roots in ancient Greco-Roman civilization. Hence, by including the figure of the goddess of victory into their welcome ceremony, the nationalists were taking a step toward bridging the perceived cultural gap between Turkey and modern Western civilization – at least at the level of the image.
In the initial years of the new regime, Islamic symbols were not immediately banished but entered a transitional phase. Similarly, the cultural symbols of “Western civilization” were not taken up directly and unchanged, but were adapted to Turkish conditions. Hence, it would be more appropriate to speak about cultural hybridization than about a mere imitation of “Western civilization.”111 The little girl in the white, winged costume is an example of such hybridization because she brings together Victoria or Nike, a goddess figure from Greco-Roman mythology, and an angel or fairy, from Turkish-Muslim culture.
According to the British historian Peter Burke, despite its appropriateness for describing a mixed form, the term “hybrid” still makes the process of coming together sound natural rather than cultural, disregarding the role of individual agency.112 Using the linguistic metaphor “cultural translation” instead of the botanical metaphor “hybridity” highlights this role. 113 The term “cultural translation” was first used by the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, who claimed that it was his job “to translate Melanesian conditions into our own.”114 To do justice to the nationalists’ purpose with the little girl and her prominent appearance in the film, I want to suggest that they, too, were performing an act of cultural translation. Unlike Malinowski’s act of translation, however, theirs not only entailed adopting Western symbols into their culture but also inserting their symbols into Western culture.
111 For the term “cultural hybridity,” see Peter Burke, Cultural Hybridity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009). 112 Ibid., 54-55. 113 Ibid., 58. 114 Ibid., 55.
75 Love in a Time of Ceasefire: Mustafa Kemal and Lâtife
Another element that was fairly extraordinary for the time and place in which The Reception of the Lausanne Peace Committee was filmed and that therefore may be seen as “opaque” in Darnton’s sense is Lâtife’s presence amongst the male leaders and retinue. Affairs of the state were considered a man’s business in traditional Ottoman society, so what was a woman doing there in the center of it all?
To understand this, it is important to know who Lâtife was and what her significance was at the time. She was born in 1898 in İzmir as the daughter of one of the richest Turkish merchants in this city, Uşakizâde Muammer Bey, who was influenced by Western culture and provided all his children with an exceptional education. Lâtife was educated through private lessons at home in İzmir before being formally educated at the American College For Girls in Istanbul for a year. 115 She continued her training at the girls’ boarding school, Tudor Hall, in London for one more year and then went to Paris in order to study law at the Sorbonne.116 When the Greek forces occupied İzmir, her father moved the family to France to await the end of the war. While there, Lâtife followed the news about the national resistance through newspapers. She even carried a picture of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, cut from a newspaper, in a locket around her neck, believing that he would save İzmir from the occupation.117 After the Turkish victory at Sakarya, Lâtife interrupted her legal studies to return to İzmir in the autumn of 1921.118 When Mustafa Kemal was looking for safe lodging in İzmir, the Uşakizâde mansion was offered to him, which is where he would meet Lâtife for the first time on 11 September 1922.119
According to her biographer, Mustafa Kemal was highly impressed by this confident young woman, who hosted him warmly.120 In fact, it was hard not to be
115 Çalışlar, Latife Hanım, 21. 116 Ibid., 34-35. Kocatürk, Doğumundan Ölümüne Kadar Kaynakçalı Atatürk Günlüğü, 322. 117 Çalışlar, Latife Hanım, 3. 118 Mango, Atatürk, 350. 119 Kocatürk, Doğumundan Ölümüne Kadar Kaynakçalı Atatürk Günlüğü, 297. 120 Çalışlar, 44-45; See also Mango, Atatürk, 350.
76 impressed by Lâtife’s qualities. Born to a wealthy and respectable family in İzmir, one of the most modern and cosmopolitan cities of the Ottoman Empire, she was educated in Europe at a time when it was exceptional for a Muslim girl to study abroad. She had also travelled around Europe and knew several languages, including Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin, Italian, English, German and French. Furthermore, like many daughters from bourgeois families in nineteenth- century Europe, Lâtife could play the piano excellently.121 In addition, she could ride a horse. Aside from her physical attractiveness, she was a modern young woman, deeply engaged in the struggle for women’s rights.
During Mustafa Kemal’s stay at the Uşakizâde mansion, Lâtife demonstrated all her qualities, including her ability to organize the household, in order to impress him. Furthermore, she served as his translator and secretary during the ceasefire negotiations with the Allied forces.122 Lâtife and Mustafa Kemal fell in love and they married on 29 January 1923 at the Uşakizâde mansion.123 For Mustafa Kemal, Lâtife was more than a wife; beautiful, smart and highly educated, she could play a crucial role in the creation of modern Turkey by representing the new face of the Turkish woman, domestically as well as internationally.
In fact, Lâtife would be one of the important driving forces behind Mustafa Kemal’s campaign to build a modern country, with the emancipation of women at the top of the agenda. Lâtife and Mustafa Kemal shared many ideas on women’s emancipation in Turkey. In his memoirs, Cemal Filmer, who owned a cinema theater in İzmir, mentions an interesting anecdote. In the early days of their marriage, when Mustafa Kemal was staying at the Uşakizâde mansion, he would call Filmer to screen films for him, Lâtife and their guests in the garden. 124 Filmer writes that, once, without waiting for Mustafa Kemal’s conversation with some high officials to finish, Lâtife angrily ordered Filmer to start screening
121 According to Çalışlar, Lâtife took piano lessons from the Austro-German poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s relative, the pianist Anna-Grosser Rilke, for three years. Çalışlar, Latife Hanım, 22-23. 122 Ibid, 48. 123 Kocatürk, Doğumundan Ölümüne Kadar Kaynakçalı Atatürk Günlüğü, 322. 124 Filmer writes that he wanted to show Mustafa Kemal a film depicting the latter’s inspection of a front together with the famous woman writer Halide Edip (Adıvar). See Cemil Filmer, Hatıralar: Türk Sinemasında 65 Yıl (İstanbul: Emek Matbaacılık ve İlâncılık, 1984), 122.
77 films. Mustafa Kemal responded by stating that he would let Filmer know when the films could start and that Filmer should take a little rest.125 This anectode shows that, although the couple agreed ideologically on the need for women’s emancipation in Turkey, masculine dominance in the home was not always easy to abolish.
Filmer relates another significant event regarding cinema that occurred in the early days of Mustafa Kemal and Lâtife’s marriage in İzmir.126 On one of his visits to the Uşakizâde mansion, Filmer wanted to screen the last part of the films about the war fronts, but complained about the poor quality of the fabricated screen in the garden. Instead, he invited Mustafa Kemal to his cinema theater, Ankara Sineması, where he could offer him much better visual quality and some other films. After canceling some tasks from his program, Mustafa Kemal accepted the offer to go the cinema, stating that he would be there at three o’clock on that day. As can be imagined, a cinema visit by the nation’s hero was something out of the ordinary.127
For the visit, the box at the balcony of the cinema was prepared with silver tea sets and cookies. The streets were full of people, who had heard about the cinema visit. When the pasha arrived in his car, people were shouting, crying and applauding, and animal sacrifices were being made. Men and women were pushing each other in order to see Mustafa Kemal. Finally, when he left the car, Filmer led him to the box at the balcony prepared for him. When the pasha arrived, however, he looked down at the audience and asked: “Why is there no woman among the audience?” Filmer answered: “My pasha, we have an exclusive film screening for women only on Tuesdays; on other days it is forbidden.” Mustafa Kemal turned to his aid de camp Muzaffer and said: “go down and bring the women outside, inside.” Soon, the cinema was full of women. According to Filmer, this was the first time in Turkey that men and women, along with
125 Ibid., 122-23. 126 Filmer does not give an exact date for the anecdote, but mentions that it happened in the early days of Mustafa Kemal’s marriage, when they were trying to organize the first Izmir Economic Congress, which took place between 17 February and 4 March 1923. Ibid., 123. 127 Ibid., 124.
78 Mustafa Kemal, watched a film together in Ankara Sineması. Apparently, the women applauded Mustafa Kemal for so long that Filmer could not start the film screening on time.128
The cinema program on that day started with the film Şarlo İdama Mahkum (Charlie is Sentenced to Death). At the time, the famous Hollywood actor Charlie Chaplin was known in Turkey as Şarlo, probably because Turks preferred to pronounce his name “Charlot” like the French, instead of “Charlie” like the Americans or British. This can also be read as another indication of the strong French influence on the cinema culture of Turkey in the late Ottoman and early Republican period. In my research, I could not find a Charlie Chaplin film called “Charlie is Sentenced to Death,” so I suspect that instead of translating the film’s original title directly into Turkish, a new name was given to it. Changing a foreign movie title was common practice in those days. It was done in order to convey the movie’s theme more clearly to domestic audiences or if the foreign title did not translate well.
To find the film, I went through the Charlie Chaplin filmography and found that Chaplin played the role of a convict three times before Mustafa Kemal’s cinema visit, in 1916, 1917 and 1923. He played an ex-convict in Police, released on 27 May 1916, and an escaped convict in The Adventurer, released on 22 October 1917, and The Pilgrim, released on 26 February 1923.129 Given that Chaplin played an ex-convict in Police, this film could not have been the film Mustafa Kemal watched. Since Filmer mentions that the cinema visit took place when “Mustafa Kemal and Latife Hanım were newly married and trying to organize the first İzmir Economic Congress,”130 the film they watched was in all likelihood The Adventurer, as The Pilgrim could not have been released in Turkey yet. Filmer
128 Ibid., 126. 129 Emily Smith, The Charlie Chaplin Handbook: Everything You Need to Know About Charlie Chaplin (Emereo Pty Limited, 2011), 1-10. 130 It is interesting to note that one of the issues discussed at the İzmir Economic Congress was cinema. It was decided that cinema should be used to inform and educate the Anatolian people, particularly in agriculture. The ninth paragraph of the section titled “The Issue of Agriculture and Education” stated: “on the condition of forbidding films that are immoral, peasants should be given useful information by showing them cinema films concerning agriculture, industry, geography, economy and health.” Ali Özuyar, Babıâli'de Sinema (İstanbul: İzdüşüm Yayınları, 2004), 68.
79 states that, after watching the film, Mustafa Kemal called him over and said: “Cemil, I do not remember laughing so much ever before in my life, can we watch the film again?” So the film was screened again, after which the program continued with documentary films showing Mustafa Kemal at the fronts. After the program ended, Mustafa Kemal left the Ankara Sineması with a standing ovation from the public.131
What does this event tell us about Mustafa Kemal’s approach to film and cinema at the time? It can be said that Mustafa Kemal knew that the films made of him at the fronts would be screened and that he therefore used film for propaganda purposes. This is certainly true but not sufficient. To fully understand Mustafa Kemal’s attitude towards cinema, we should pay attention to the details of the cinema visit. When Mustafa Kemal arrived at his lodge on the balcony, he asked about the lack of women in the audience. As a member of Ottoman society, he would have known that separate film screenings were organized for Muslim men and women, so this was actually a rhetorical question indicating his wish to abolish gender segregation in the cinema and, potentially, elsewhere. Moreover, he was implicitly heralding upcoming measures for the emancipation of women in Turkey. Thus, Mustafa Kemal did not only consider film as a modern propaganda tool through which he could effectively influence public opinion, but also saw the cinema as a public space that could help him transforming culture and society.
Mustafa Kemal’s concern with the emancipation of woman in Turkey is not limited to this one example. After their marriage, Mustafa Kemal and Lâtife went on a tour of Anatolia for their honeymoon. Dressed modestly in European clothes, Lâtife charmed the people. The New York Times reported, “MME. KEMAL’S CLOTHERS ARE PLEDGE OF REFORM: Her Riding Breeches Indicate Her Intention of Sweeping Away the Harem Conventions.”132 Having had a modern, Western-style education, Lâtife had the courage to discard traditional clothing and dressing in Western-style clothes instead. At a time when the
131 Filmer, Hatıralar, 126. 132 Çalışlar, Latife Hanım.
80 majority of Muslim women were veiled, Lâtife did not hesitate to show her face to other men, to stand side by side with her husband or to give public speeches. Furthermore, in the reform period, she would lobby for the emancipation of women and their political rights, such as the right to vote. 133 For foreign correspondents in particular, Lâtife was more than Mustafa Kemal’s wife; she was “the harbinger of Turkey’s transformation.”134
Lâtife fulfils the same symbolic function in The Reception of the Lausanne Peace Committee, where she stands besides İsmet Pasha and Mustafa Kemal among the men in what was a revolutionary move for the time. Lâtife appears self-assured as she walks in the forefront of the image. She is wearing a long dark dress and white gloves, and is walking with a walking stick. Most significantly, although she is wearing a headscarf, her face is bare.
In the next scene, the camera moves in closely on Lâtife, İsmet Pasha and Mustafa Kemal, enabling audiences to clearly see her face. Mustafa Kemal and İsmet Pasha are dressed in Western-style suits with ties, but they also still wear their kalpaks, as do the other men shown. Thus, the film shows how neither Lâtife nor Mustafa Kemal and his followers abandoned traditional-style dress completely. This may in part have been due to the need to please two separate audiences: the Turkish-Muslim population, which would likely resist overly radical changes, and the international community, which was eager to recognize Turkey as no longer so “other.” The film’s carefully staged images of Lâtife underline how Mustafa Kemal consciously employed the moving image to communicate his message of cultural change (including women’s emancipation) and rapprochement to the Western world, while remaining careful not to alienate the national Turkish-Muslim public.
133 In Turkey, women gained the right to participate in the electoral process locally in the early 1930s. In 1934, this right was extended to the national level. 134 Çalışlar, Latife Hanım, xii.
81 Conclusion
In this chapter, I have shown that, between 1919 and 1923, Mustafa Kemal and his followers used film as an effective tool of political communication to produce a positive public opinion about their ambitions for the country on both the domestic and the international stage. They achieved this by documenting the Turkish War of Independence, stressing their own war efforts and carefully recording alleged atrocities against the Turkish people. Their selective use of film footage, which was also sometimes staged after the fact, served as propaganda for the Ankara government. On the one hand, these efforts were aimed at gaining international recognition for the nationalist government by garnering sympathy for their cause, displaying their power and intimidating adversaries. On the other hand, they appealed to a burgeoning sense of “national” pride among former Turkish-Muslim Ottomans by projecting a heroic image of those fighting for freedom and independence.
The establishment of the Army Film Shooting Center within the army of the Grand National Assembly, as well as the extensive use of other civilian sources for film footage, such as Kemal Film and foreign agencies, confirms the level and scope of the nationalists’ investment in this medium and, by extension, illustrates the centrality of film to the political agenda of Mustafa Kemal. Nevertheless, the material and technical limitations of the time, as well as the conditions of war, limited the use of film to places that had access to electricity and suitable public venues for screenings.
Despite these limitations, the nationalists tried to win the struggle over the visual representation of the war by filming their version of events and preventing the display of enemy propaganda films in their domains. Moreover, in this period, the nationalists also initiated a film “archive” in the Foucauldian and Derridean sense, which would not only shape the narrative of the war in their lifetime but also in the future. Through being filmed while undertaking military activities during the war, Mustafa Kemal established a strong image of his leadership both at home and abroad. His statements and actions suggest that he
82 was well aware of film’s potential to produce historical evidence for the future, in order to build a new community based on a common memory and a national consciousness.
In the early twentieth century many European nations, as well as the US, used film as a popular and efficient means of transmitting news. While we do not know the full extent to which news about Turkey was included in Euro-American newsreels, we do know that Mustafa Kemal appeared in some of them during the War of Independence. These international appearances, together with the clear interest of the Ankara government in producing its own film footage of the war, suggest that the nationalists were well aware of the political uses of cinema. During the war and its aftermath, they consciously mobilized film in order to change attitudes around the world. Unfortunately, as of today, there is no conclusive evidence of the extent to which Mustafa Kemal and the Turkish War of Independence appeared in international cinemas or of the impact this had on foreign audiences. Further research in this area is therefore necessary.
My analysis of the three films featuring Mustafa Kemal in this chapter has demonstrated how, for him, cinema was about more than simply registering reality. By opening up a public space in which gender segregation could be abolished and women emancipated, cinema as a social and cultural force assisted Mustafa Kemal in transforming culture and society. What was shown on the screen, moreover, had a strongly symbolic dimension, illustrating the transformations that were taking place in the image politics of the Ankara government. By including unusual scenes or characters, such as Mustafa Kemal adopting a Napoleonic gesture, the goddess of victory in the welcome ceremony or Lâtife walking besides the country’s leaders, film, considered the most modern and “realistic” medium of the time, was used to convey a message of cultural change and rapprochement to the “Western world.” In the next chapter, I will explore its continued use in the construction of the Republic of Turkey and Atatürk’s myth.
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