Political Opposition in the Early Turkish Republic: The Progressive Republican Party: 1924-1925.

• Author: Weiker, Walter F.

Erik Zurcher, Reader in Middle East History at the University of Nijmegen and Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, has filled an important gap in the political history of the Turkish Republic. In this succinct volume he gives what will undoubtedly be the definitive account of an episode which, among other things, indicated that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, for better or worse, was sometimes thin-skinned and determinedly protective of his own position as the unrivaled leader of his country and his reform program.

After a useful discourse on "Historiography," where he details the complexities of finding unbiased sources for the writing of contemporary Turkish political history, Zurcher explores, as background to the PRP episode, personal relations between Ataturk and important contemporaries during the Young Turk period, and the attempts of Enver Pasha to regain power during the years immediately after World War I by reviving the Committee of Union and Progress. Enver failed, of course, but an important factor in Ataturk's ability to dominate was that Ataturk had the support of a great many other important military and political figures.

The Progressive Republican Party of 1924-25 was led by some of the same leaders, who strongly,supported the Kemalist revolution in principle but differed on what Ataturk considered important matters of tactics and implementation. Several of the PRP members also took personal offense at the President's habit of ramming laws through the Grand National Assembly without what they considered adequate time for debate, and at his failure to consult them (many, such as Rauf Orbay, Ali Fuat Cebesoy and Kazim Karabekir, being among his oldest friends and colleagues).

In programmatic terms, there were both structural and ideological issues. Regarding the former, Zurcher describes the PRP leaders as "classical liberals" who favored checks and balances, rather than Ataturk's notion that "sovereignty belongs to the nation," a sovereignty that is best expressed through the concentration of all power in a unicameral Assembly. On ideology, there were numerous articles on economic and social programs, most not greatly different from those of the government. The ruling Republican People's Party, in particular, alleged that the PRP was anti-secularist, citing Article 6 which said "The party respects religious beliefs and convictions." Zurcher finds no basis for this accusation, though...