Atatürk, Abridged

A sketch I wrote on request for the spring 2013 issue of the Knight-Wallace Fellowship house organ.

photo credit: Josh Neufeld

It was a weekday morning, still early, and when the busload of foreign journalists arrived, Ceremonial Plaza at the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) in Ankara was mostly empty, save for a sprinkling of tourists and a gaggle of schoolchildren on a patriotic field trip. The emptiness made the bombastic architecture feel slightly forlorn.

Guards in polished helmets and long topcoats with shiny brass buttons stood sentry on pedestals, still as toy soldiers, one gloved hand propped on a rifle, the other tucked neatly into the small of the back. The foreign journalists snapped photographs of them. Overhead the flag of Turkey made a red motion in the overcast sky.

Into the emptiness and monumental stillness there now came an excited disturbance dressed in black. He had a black ball cap on. A brown leather satchel was slung over a shoulder. He carried a pointer with a red ribbon tied to the tip. Black sneakers squeaking on the marble, he bustled into the midst of the foreign journalists, poking the sky with his pointer and waggling the red bow. “Come! Come!” he said. “We walk in a hurry way, because of time.”

He went bustling up the marble steps that rose to the entrance of a building resembling a Parthenon from which the curves had been cut away, leaving only right angles and straight lines, even in the columns—Atatürk's tomb. The journalists followed him, but in a distracted, leisurely way rather than in a hurry way, as the schedule demanded.

Twenty-five minutes! The journalists had a 10:30 appointment at the prime ministry with the assistant undersecretary for foreign affairs, the tour guide had been told. It was now 9:45, which meant they had to be back on the bus by 10:10 at the latest, which meant that the tour guide had only 25 minutes in which to impress upon the foreign journalists all the glorious sayings and accomplishments of Atatürk, founding father of the Turkish Republic. Twenty-five minutes!

         
At the entrance to the mausoleum, the tour guide gestured at a brass plaque affixed to the marble wall. In Turkish and English, the plaque quoted from Atatürk's Address to the Turkish Youth, delivered on Oct. 20, 1927. “Your first duty is to preserve and to defend Turkish independence and the Turkish Republic forever. This is the very foundation of your existence and your future....”

        
The tour guide ran his hand up and down the plaque like a saleswoman. “You may photograph!” he said. No one did.

         
Onward, to another brass plaque: “The Turkish Nation! We are in the fifteenth year of the start of our war of liberation. This is the greatest day marking the tenth year of our Republic ...”

         
“You may photograph!” No one did.

        
9:50. The marble sarcophagus of Atatürk, adorned with a red and white seal made of flowers. “His body is buried seven meters below!” Here, the cameras finally clicked. When they stopped snapping, the tour guide pivoted squeakily and rushed back out into the sunlight where, on the steps overlooking Ceremonial Plaza, he herded the journalists onto the marble platform from which speeches were some-times delivered.

        
9:56. Time for a hasty group photograph. The foreign journalists posed. On the platform beneath them, like a caption, another saying of Atatürk had been carved into the marble, Turkish for “Sovereignty unconditionally belongs to the nation.”

         
With 14 minutes minutes to go they finally entered the Atatürk museum, where glass cases displayed Atatürk’s personal effects. Squeaking down the corridor, the tour guide shouted out their contents. “Sticks of Atatürk!” as he passed a display of canes. “Medals of Atatürk!” Between the cases, he served up biographical factoids in no particular order. “Atatürk changed the alphabet in 1928! He was successful in everything but marriage! Personal stuff of Atatürk! He never went outside the country! Suits of Atatürk!” Of a Madame Tussaud-style sculpture, the tour guide said, “The wax of Atatürk!” Then with his pointer he gestured at an antique rowing machine: “Sport!”

         
10:06. Dioramas from the war of independence. “No information! Just look!” the tour guide said. His expression made clear that there was in fact information, lots of it, and he wished he could share it all, but—he tapped his wristwatch with two fingers. And so without lingering, the foreign journalists looked: antique cannons, antique mortar shells, boxes of artillery, uniformed mannequins representing dead soldiers, bullets scattered about, rocks spattered with red metallic paint meant to suggest blood, an electric flame inside an antique lantern, all arranged theatrically before a painted panorama of Gallipoli, battleships burning in the distance, while a martial theme and explosive sound effects played on a hidden sound system, and Turkish schoolchildren stood at the rail pointing. On the journalists, the dioramas did not seem to have the desired effect—of bringing these historical events to life, or inspiring admiration for the battlefield heroics of Atatürk. In his notebook, one of the journalists scribbled a note: “The sadness of dioramas.”

         
10:09. “Gift shop!” Atatürk neckties, Atatürk wristwatches, Atatürk coloring books. With his beribboned pointer, the tour guide slapped out a nervous staccato on his trouser leg. “Sorry!” he said, sounding genuinely apologetic. “But we don’t have time”—for shopping, he meant. “Mr. Ferhat is waiting. You get the zip program.”»