Ataturk Religion Quotes

None the less some of the young men of the day had begun to turn away from Islam as a political, as distinct from a religious, force. In its place was arising a new concept of nationalism, which put race before religion and saw Turks, for the first time, as Turks. Hitherto the name of Turk had been used, even among Turks themselves, as a term of contempt applicable only to the more menial strata of the Anatolian peasantry. There was even a certain conscious irony in the coining by Kemal, years later, of the patriotic phrase, 'Happy is the man who calls himself a Turk'. But now the name was acquiring a new and more noble significance. Young Turks, in their search for fresh roots, began to reach back to a racial past in the Central Asian steppes. Here, where they were Turks before they were Ottomans and Moslems, they would surely find a common social and cultural heritage on which to build a common future.

The new secular republic reflected Mustafa Kemal’s personal philosophy. In a book published in 1928, Grace Ellison quotes him as saying to her, presumably in 1926–7: I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow-men.31 Yet, like many rationalists, Mustafa Kemal was himself superstitious and sought omens in dreams.32 When he inspected the front in March 1922, during the War of Independence, he had portions of the Koran recited during evening gatherings with commanders.33 But now he was out of the wood.