Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization Under Ataturk and Reza Shah

Reza Shah dissolved the Hezb-e Teraqqi in 1932. He seems to have relied on individuals who were totally dependent on his whim and deeply mistrusted institutions and collective bodies, even those created by himself. Mustafa Kemal, on the other hand, created a party, which, although it was undoubtedly an instrument for authoritarian and later even totalitarian policies, nevertheless formed the training ground where the politicians of the post-war multiparty democracy could learn their trade. It started out as an instrument for control of the National Assembly, but from about 1930 onwards it also began to give a corporate identity to an important section of the urban middle class that saw itself as the ‘enlightened’ vanguard of a social and cultural revolution.

In the earlier phase there was, so to speak, a bridge between the state and the society, which maintained the personal loyalty of ministers and other officials while at the same time making them responsible as members of the executive. Atatu¨rk never lost legitimacy, at least in his own constituency and among the secular, modernist or modernising strata of Turkish society, however critical some of them may have become of some of his policies. Reza Shah’s position was quite comparable to this at the beginning of his reign, but a few years later he began to lose it when he moved from the position of an authoritarian dictator to that of an absolute and arbitrary ruler. The change was therefore absolutely crucial. Arbitrary rule and harsh behaviour undid even his useful contributions to stability and modernisation.

The personal and organizational connections between Unionists and Kemalists should not be allowed, therefore, to obscure their fundamental differences in outlook and purpose. Nothing perhaps exemplifies that contrast better than the divergent development of civil-military relations under the two regimes. The Young Turks, swept into power as champions of constitutional and parliamentary government, proceeded to concentrate power increasingly in military hands. Both the professional integrity of the army and the constitutional integrity of the political process suffered severely as a result. The Kemalist movement, starting from a military apex, worked hard to provide itself with a solid civilian base.