HyeTert: The Plot to Kill Atatürk

The Plot to Kill Atatürk

Samuel Dolbee, New York University

On 10 November, many people in Turkey will pause at 9:05 am to observe the anniversary of the moment of the death of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey according to many, died in 1938, probably of cirrhosis of the liver. But nearly three years before, forces beyond his liver and far beyond Turkey's borders allegedly conspired to kill the man. The entire affair sheds light on both the complicated place of religion in the public sphere of the republic as well as the enduring nature of Ottoman networks in a post-Ottoman world.

According to early newspaper accounts, some time in September 1935, a group of well-armed mostly Circassian men travelled from Amman in Transjordan to Damascus and Aleppo in Syria before crossing the border into Turkey at Kilis. Their orders were to mount some sort of attack on Atatürk. Newspapers referred to it as an assassination plot (suikasd, literally meaning "bad intent"). And these orders were to be given by Ali Saip, a Kurd from Kirkuk who represented Urfa in the Turkish parliament. But before the orders came, the man sheltering the plotters grew afraid, and in the ensuing confusion, one of the conspirators was arrested and became a key witness in a trial that ultimately ensnared hundreds of people across the post-Ottoman world. The alleged plotters formed a veritable A-Team of marginalized (to put it mildly) late-Ottoman peoples, mostly Circassian (including the usual suspect Çerkes Etem) but also involving plenty of Kurds and Armenians in Syria, too.

But before talking about the implications of dissident networks utilizing an Ottoman geography in a post-Ottoman world, I want to discuss the Turkish public response to the alleged assassination attempt. After the government disclosed the plot against Atatürk, massive demonstrations took place all over Turkey in support of the president. Alongside Turkish love for Atatürk was hatred for the accused plotters. In Beyazit on Wednesday September 23 (see collage of images below), Meliha Avni Sözen, for example, read a poem in front of an estimated 100,000 people that called Mustafa Kemal "the Turk's beating heart." She also directed the following words of advice to the accused, insinuating that such actions could never be committed by true Turks: "Damn these scoundrels carrying Turkish names. Damn them, let them be ashamed, let them bark like dogs" (24 October Cumhuriyet). You get the point. And this was happening all over the country.

In line with early republican efforts to promote French-style secularism, there doesn't seem to be any mention of Islam in the media coverage of these gatherings. But if media coverage rendered Islam invisible in many of the public meetings, it trumpeted the religious dimensions of support ceremonies held by non-Muslim groups. From Beyoğlu's Kent Seth Israel Synagogue a lawyer called Makoneham articulated quite an apocalyptic vision of what would happen if Atatürk were to be killed: "The damned who want to participate in the assassination of Atatürk do not know that to assassinate our great leader means to assassinate humanity, civilization, history, and the future. From now on Atatürk is the whole Turkish nation's holy trust" (28 October Cumhuriyet). At an Armenian church in Beyoğlu on Thursday the 24th, Piskopos Aslanyan gave thanks that "the perfidious enemy" (kahpe düşman) had failed to kill Atatürk, whom Aslanyan described as a man of "unparalleled genius" (eşsiz deha). The service concluded with the sacrifice of two animals (see image below) outside the church door and a reading of "prayers wishing long life to Atatürk" (25 October Cumhuriyet). Other ceremonies held by Assyrians and Turkish Orthodox carried similar messages of support.

For all the unified public displays of devotion among minority groups, however, a degree of anxiety likely persisted in the wake of the assassination plot, too, given the thin line between nationalism and xenophobia. Just two days before the Armenian ceremony in Beyoğlu, the editor of Cumhuriyet himself, Yunus Nadi, had blamed French machinations in Syria for the plot to kill Mustafa Kemal. Nadi exonerated the vast majority of Syrians, terming them "our brothers of yesterday" in an allusion to Ottoman bonds. But not everyone in Syria escaped his antipathy. He likened the Armenian residents of French-planned settlements just south of the Turkish border to "thorns sticking in our sides" (sanki yanlarımıza dikenler dikmiştir) (22 October Cumhuriyet).

While people in Turkey declared love and hatred with recited poems and sacrificial sheep, police in Turkey and of the various states under League of Nations mandates stretched a dragnet out across the former Ottoman Empire (see Çerkes Hamdi, one of those suspected , below). They searched homes and arrested alleged plotters in Hama, Homs, Amman, and Haifa. Cumhuriyet provided details of the arrest of three Circassian men in Haifa. According to the story, they had all been Ottoman officers who had apparently deserted to the Greek side during the post-World War I Turkish War of Independence. Afterwards they headed to Palestine and became embroiled in this plot against Atatürk (26 October Cumhuriyet).

European archival sources from Nantes tell a considerably less exciting story. According to British reports, of the three men arrested in Palestine, only two were Circassian ex-Ottoman officers. One worked as a police constable in Haifa. Another had previously been a "professional pugilist" but had since made his living painting houses with the third man. The gang of a policeman and housepainters seemed opposed to the Turkish regime, but the British released them when they found no grounds for detention.

French sources meanwhile cast doubt on the entire affair. An informant described as "trustworthy but Kurdish" (as if they were contradictory!) from the southeastern Turkish town of Nusaybin told French security forces in Qamishli that the whole plot was "a story...imagined to serve a pretext for suppressing some influential partisans of the opposition and notably Ali Saip, deputy of Urfa and the principal accused."

And in the end, this estimation seems to have been accurate. In February of 1936 Ali Saip went to trial for charges of participating in the plot. In opening remarks, the state's prosecutor articulated the gravity of the charges against Urfa's parliamentary representative, noting, "I do not consider Atatürk a simple mortal like the rest of us; I have the conviction that this is a being of superior essence, the quintessence of 17 million Turks." Ali Saip seems to have agreed. According to an article by Bengül Salman Bolat, Ali Saip broke down in tears on the witness stand and declared his love for Atatürk. He was subsequently acquitted of all charges related to the plot.

So the plot failed and the case against the plot failed. But the reaction to the plot, as a ritual of nationalism, wildly succeeded, enabling Mustafa Kemal to fortify his power and support both within government and in the public sphere.

The story of this alleged attempt to kill Atatürk and public responses to it can also tell us quite a good deal about the mixed-up processes of integration and disintegration at work in the post-Ottoman world. On the one hand, Islam was absent in the media coverage of the public response to the plot, while Christians and Jews alike conveyed their support for Atatürk in religious ceremonies. Though these dynamics of selective secularization might be distinctly republican, the plot itself showed that Ottoman networks and human geographies did not disintegrate with the political structures of the empire. Disgruntled Circassian former Ottoman army officers dispersed across a wide swath of the former Ottoman domains could plausibly threaten the head of state of the Turkish Republic. And insofar as the plot helped Mustafa Kemal consolidate his rule, the ghosts of the Ottoman past only made Atatürk, the man legendary for transforming the empire into a republic, stronger. The Ottoman Empire mattered, even for the man who ended it.