Turks to protect late dictator online

Fresh from their ban of YouTube, the Turkish government is set to filter out websites that are deemed "insulting" to founding father Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. As usual, the justification comes from a provision of Turkish law that outlaws "insulting Turkishness". Most western readers would ask - how is insulting a dictator who's been dead for nearly 70 years tantamount to insulting the entire concept of "Turkishness", and more to the point, who cares if anyone insults "Turkishness" to begin with?

In Turkey, the answer is simple: Atatürk created, nearly from whole cloth, the modern Turkish identity when he dismantled the corpse of the Ottoman state. Therefore, when Turks assert that an assault on Atatürk is an assault on Turkey and Turkish identity, they actually may have a point insofar as both would not exist as we know them today without Atatürk. What the Turks also seem to realize is that they're fighting a losing battle by expecting the rest of the world to revere the late dictator. While Atatürk is the only dictator on my Top 10 list that I actually credit with doing something positive for their nations, I can understand why Kurds and Armenians, for example, might not be as enamored with the man who created the modern Turkish state.

At any rate, it's only a matter of time before Turkey's European Union aspirations collide with their efforts to stifle criticism or insults of Atatürk, but I have to wonder: will my blog be banned in Turkey as well?

Turkey bans YouTube after Atatürk insulted

A court in Turkey has banned national access to YouTube following claims that a Greek video blogger had uploaded a video calling national icon Kemal Atatürk a "faggot".

Lest anyone forget, criticism of Atatürk is outlawed in Turkey as part of an infamous provision in the Turkish penal code that outlaws "insulting Turkishness". This law also bars any ugly speculation that Turkey had any role in the deaths of a whole lot of Armenians, but insulting Atatürk is considered an even more unthinkable thoughtcrime in a nation that was remade in Atatürk's image.

YouTube, as is their wont, completely caved in and removed the offending video, leaving the rest of us to wonder why the rest of the world is supposed to get upset about a Greek insulting a dead Turkish leader. Obviously, there's still some lingering bad blood between Greece and Turkey, but caving into Turkey, while commercially understandable, is somewhat ridiculous. On a website where you can find thousands of foreigners insulting leaders from George Bush to, well, George Bush, only Turkey so admires their former dictator by outlawing criticism of him completely.

Sure, there are plenty of countries where insulting the current dictator is illegal, but even Saparmurat Niyazov allowed criticism of former Soviet leaders. Does Turkey, a nation aspiring to European Union membership, really imagine that they can keep these archaic laws alive and join the EU? If he were alive today, it would seem likely that Atatürk, ever forward looking, would urge his countrymen to scrap the silly laws protecting the honor of a dead man to move Turkey to the next stage of history.

In the meantime, though, would anyone care to make a video blog calling Mao Zedong a pederast to see if China blocks YouTube?

Top 10 Profile: Kemal Atatürk

Name: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Born: Thessaloniki, Greece (formerly part of the Ottoman Empire) 1881
Died: Istanbul, Turkey November 10, 1938
Length of rule: 15 years (October 1923 until his death in 1938)
Means of ascent to power: Military victory
Means of removal from power: Died while in power
Style: Benevolent dictatorship, cult of personality

NOTES:

It may be argued that no other 20th century leader has left so large a mark on his nation as Kemal Atatürk. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War One, Atatürk rebuilt his nation from the ground up.

Atatürk's most notable, almost impossible, achievement was the transformation of the Islamic Ottoman Empire into the politically secular Republic of Turkey. On paper, this doesn't seem very impressive, but the political and social impact changed the face of the Muslim world forever. Continuing from there, Atatürk remolded the image of his people from the pan-Islamic religious identity into a solidly Turkish nationalist one. Atatürk turned away from the Middle East and looked towards Europe for new modes of dress, and even introduced orthographic reform for the Turkish language by abolishing the Arabic script Turks had used for centuries and mandating the use of the Roman alphabet.

Since his death, Atatürk has become the embodiment of Turkey and of Turkishness. Indeed, criticism of Atatürk is unthinkable - even illegal - in Turkey to this day. None of the other dictators on my top 10 list (not even Mao or Stalin) have had the same lasting social, cultural or political impacts on their subjects as Atatürk has had on his.