‘Democracy is hope of human race’

ANKARA

Democracy is the hope of the human race, Türkiye’s founding leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk told U.S. journalist Isaac Marcosson for an interview originally published by The Saturday Evening Post on Nov. 20, 1923.

Atatürk unveiled his nation’s most crucial values and principles, notably democracy, before the declaration of the Republic in an interview with the U.S. journalist.

Hürriyet Daily News republishes a shortened version of Marcosson's article with important remarks by the great leader.

It was the Turkish cabinet in session, and they were discussing the latest telegrams from Lausanne, where Ismet Pasha, minister of foreign affairs, and the only absent member, had, only the day before, delivered the Turkish ultimatum on the Chester Concession and the Turkish foreign debt. Economic war, or worse, hung in the balance.

As I advanced, Rauf Bey came out and escorted me into the room where the cabinet sat. There was a quick group introduction. I had eyes, however, for only one person. It was the tall figure that rose from its place at the head of the table and came towards me with hand outstretched. I had seen endless pictures of Kemal and I was therefore familiar with his appearance.

Rauf Bey introduced me to Kemal in the cabinet room. After we had exchanged the customary salutations in French he said,” Perhaps we had better go into the next room for our talk and leave the cabinet to its deliberations.”

A butler, no less well-groomed than his master, brought the inevitable thick Turkish coffee and cigarettes. The interview began.

“What is your ideal of government?” I now asked. “In other words, do you still believe in Pan-Islam and in the Pan-Turanianism idea?”

“Pan-Islam represented a federation based on the community of religion. Pan-Turanianism embodied the same kind of community of effort and ambition, based on race. Both were wrong. The idea of Pan-Islam really died centuries ago at the gates of Vienna, at the farthest north of the Turkish advance in Europe. Pan-Turanianism perished on the plains of the East.”

“Both of these movements were wrong because they were based on the idea of conquest, which means force and imperialism. For many years imperialism dominated Europe. But imperialism is doomed. You find the answer in the wreck of Germany, Austria, Russia, and in the Turkey that was. Democracy is the hope of the human race,” Atatürk said.

“You may think it strange that a Turk and a soldier like myself who has been bred to war should talk this way. But this is precisely the idea that is behind the new Türkiye. We want no force, no conquest. We want to be let alone and permitted to work out our own economic and political destiny. Upon this is reared the whole structure of the new Turkish democracy, which, let me add, represents the American idea, with this difference—we are one big state while you are forty-eight.”

“The first and foremost idea of the new Türkiye is not political but economic. We want to be part of the world of production as well as of consumption.”