Evaluate Kemalism in its historical context, says Dutch academic

[JanDutchy]

Sunday, October 18, 2009
ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

Kemalism has been a very formative ideology for the Turkish state and society, the effects of which are still felt today, said a prominent Dutch academic at a roundtable discussion in Istanbul.

Nonetheless, there is a need for more dispassionate debate on the topic. When discussed, Kemalism should be placed in its own historical context and away from today’s “blame game,” said Professor Erik-Jan Zürcher, a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, who attended a roundtable discussion on secularism and modernization in Turkey at Istanbul’s Bilgi University. The discussion was organized by the ARI Movement, an Istanbul-based think tank

In Zürcher’s view, based on his speech titled “A Modern and Civilized Nation – The Brave New World of the Kemalists,” Kemalism is the key to understanding Turkish modernization. In order to trace the modernizing tenets of Kemalism, he analyzed the content of Kemalist periodical “La Turquie Kemaliste,” which was published between 1934 and 1941 and later in 1947-48. “La Turquie Kemaliste” was a monthly journal written mostly in French and occasionally in German or English and addressed to European readers. Zürcher argued that the content of “La Turquie Kemaliste” allows us to see how intellectuals from the 1930s were conceptualizing their ideas and how they envisioned the future of society.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=kemalism-cannot-be-used-as-part-of-blame-game-says-dutch-academic-2009-10-18