The Author's Family
A Love Story Lent a Helping Hand by Kemal Atatürk
by Bulent Atalay
Written as a tribute to General Kemal Atalay, following his death on February 14, 2003,
for the Voice of Atatürk-- a publication of the Atatürk Society of America (ASA)
June 23, 2005, the cruise ship, Crystal Serenity, on which I am serving as a special topics lecturer, docks in Thessalonica, Greece’s second largest city. At the turn of the 20th century, as “Selanik,” it was the Ottoman Empire’s second largest city. The streets of the ancient city are poorly laid out; there is no grid with a north-south and east-west bearing. Like most old cities, it has evolved according to the natural topography of the land, with a citadel perched on its acropolis. Worse yet all the signs are in Greek, and although, as a physicist, I know the letters and can sound out the words, I have no idea of their meaning.
My wife, Carol Jean, and I, along with two friends from the Serenity, Stephen and Linda Young, are in search of Atatürk’s birthplace, 17 Apostolou Pavlou,
located next to the Turkish Consulate. To get our bearings, we drive up to the acropolis of Thessalonica, where the ancient Byzantine walls still stand, restored; but with time running out to return to the ship, we are nearing a frenzied state. Quite suddenly we happen upon a young boy, an apprentice to an automobile mechanic, who senses our frustration, and in lucid English, asks if he can help us. When we tell him the address, he responds that he does not know the place himself. But then he strolls over to his boss. They discuss our plight. When he returns, he tells us that they will lead us in their own pickup truck.
The distance turns out to be no more than a mile through serpentine streets, but it takes twenty-minutes to negotiate the distance through the virtually impenetrable rush-hour traffic. Then as Stephen shoehorns the rental car into a tight spot, I jump out and begin a mad jog up the street, in search of Number 17. Midway up the next block, perhaps a hundred yards away, is the two story frame house that I have seen in faded, old pictures, the upper story cantilevered over the lower, evocative of the 19th century houses one sees in Istanbul. Atatürk’s house at last! And the narrow street, where my grandfather, Ismail Hakki, as a young boy, played with Mustafa Kemal, his closest childhood friend, who would go on to rescue Turkey, then set on a seemingly inexorable course to disintegration. A grateful parliament of the republic he created would later bestow on him the appellation, Atatürk, “Father of the Turks,” then proceed to retire the title permanently, lest someone else try to adopt it.
Later that afternoon the Serenity sails east, on a course south of the Athos Peninsula, with its colorful monasteries. Early in the morning the following day the ship slows down to allow a pilot to board and guide us up the Dardanelles. I stand on the top deck, surveying the magical panorama. Sailing up the 46-mile straits, it is impossible not to be moved by the spirit of these hallowed lands, witness to spectacular drama. On the starboard side, and not more than a few miles away, lie the ruins of Troy, the legendary city destroyed in the mid-13th century BC by the Mycenaean Greeks.Almost eight hundred years later the Persian King Xerxes lashed his ships together, creating a pontoon bridge, and crossed the Dardanelles on his way to invading Greece. And another hundred years later still Alexander the Great repaid the favor, constructed his own pontoon bridge, and crossed over to Asia, taking the first step in his relentless bid to conquer the world. Six hundred years ago the Ottomans began their isolation of Constantinople by stretching chains across the straits. Finally, a mere one hundred and seventy years ago at the same spot the Romantic poet Lord Byron, an exceptionally strong swimmer, crossed the Dardanelles, known for its treacherous currents. Consumed with classical Greece and its fertile mythology, Byron was reenacting one of Leander’s nocturnal crossings, in order to visit his lover, Hero, living on the other side.
On the portside, the Western shore, stand prominent monuments of the Turks, the French, and the British, honoring an unknown soldier lost in the Gallipoli Campaign.
The land is literally pockmarked with numberless trenches. It is here that hundreds of thousands of troops —Turkish and ANZAC — faced each other in 1915. And when it was all over, a half million young troops, evenly divided between the two sides, had lost their lives. The smoke of battle — bullets and cannon shells — turned the sky opaque at midday. Perhaps because of the shared misery, the two sides came to respect each other to the point where, it is said, a daily coffee and smoke break would take place, allowing the soldiers to climb out of their bunkers in relative safety. But when they returned, if as much as a hand showed, it would be shot off .
Oxford educated poet, Rupert Brooke, was here. Having romanticized warfare in his earlier poetry, he died not in battle, but on the way to battle, of sunstroke just two days before the Battleship Hood delivered the troops to the area. “Rupert Brooke is dead… [his] life has closed at the moment when it seemed to have reached its springtime." wrote Winston Spencer Churchill, in his obituary for the young poet. And indeed, Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, who had originallymasterminded the scheme — to sail up the Dardanelles, take control of Istanbul, and then strike at Germany from its “soft underbelly.” The failed campaign led to Churchill losing his job. On the facing hills on the portside, one sees a flat white figure — an image created in limestone of a soldier clutching his rifle with one hand, signaling his comrades to follow him into battle with the other. Next to it, spelled out in limestone markers, one sees Atatürk’s immortal words, “Pause Traveler. This ground on which you unwittingly tread marks the spot where an era came to an end.”
And then one also remembers the deeply
comforting, profoundly gracious words with which he addressed the families of the fallen Aussies and Kiwis:
"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours... You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well." — Kemal Atatürk
Atatürk’s poignant message is inscribed in the Turkish Monument to the Unknown Soldier in Gallipoli, and it is inscribed on the Atatürk Memorial in Canberra. It is no wonder that in distant Australia, there is still a sense of kinship for Atatürk and the Turks — enemies, but fellow witnesses to the unspeakable horrors of trench warfare — and, conversely, a resentment of the British politicians who sent a generation of their young men to fight and die in a land half-a-world away. For the Turks, the Australians, and the New Zealanders Gallipoli would forever be regarded as the moment when they gained their national identities.
Through the generations, my family has demonstrated an almost idolatrous admiration and affection for Atatürk. His pictures abounded in my parents’ home in Istanbul, although only in one picture is my father, then a young second lieutenant, seen with Atatürk himself. Certainly a unique, iconic national hero, he made a small, but critical contribution to my family. He served as catalyst in the marriage of my own mother and father.
THE DRIVE DOWN THE PENINSULA
I have been through the straits, as well as on both storied shores many times, but the visit just the day after seeing Atatürk’s birthplace in Thessalonica makes the experience of sailing the straits on this occasion utterly unforgettable. I remember a visit in 1967, when Carol Jean and I, accompanied by my mother and father, drove down the Gallipoli Peninsula from Istanbul. My father, General Kemal Atalay, the Undersecretary of Defense, had taken his annual holiday so that he could be with us. I was visiting my parents with my wife and two very young children. Just three years earlier on a visit to Washington, DC my father had seen our daughter, Jeannine, then not quite a year old and just beginning to walk. This time in Turkey he would meet our son, Michael Kemal Atalay, who had just turned one and was beginning to walk. But on this excursion to Canakkale, we left the children with my grandmother at the army resort in Fenerbahce, Istanbul, which we were using as home base. And it was on our lengthy drive down the Gallipoli Peninsula that my father first told us the story of his father, Ismail Hakki, and the family’s “Atatürk connection,” how he and my mother met, and the circumstances of their marriage.
My grandfather fought in those trenches for eight months, through the better part of 1915. A photograph was taken of his battalion during a break in the action. Immediately after the cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of the ANZACS, he briefly traveled to Edirne (Roman Adrionople) on assignment, and while there, on January 1, 1916, had a photograph taken of himself. He inscribed on the back of the photograph in old Turkish (right-to-left), “To my dear aunt, I have survived eight months of action in Gallipoli. I will soon leave for the Eastern Front, there to face the Arabs and their recalcitrant English leader.”
Group portrait of my grandfather's company during the Gallipoli Campaign. He is seen standing in the rear row and approximately two-thirds of the way from left (an oblique dark line idenfies him). The photograph hangs in the Naval Museum in Çanakkale (1915).
Just before leaving for the Eastern Front, he visited the small town of Biga, lying to the east of Çanakkale and Troy. He went to see his young family, ensconced in the town since
shortly before the war began. There were his wife and three young children, two years apart in age – the oldest, a daughter; the middle, a son; and the youngest, another son — my father, “Mustafa Kemal”— named after Ismail Hakki’s childhood friend, and in accord with his wishes. (Last names were not introduced into Turkey until 1934. It can make genealogical research a hopelessly difficult task.)
After only a day or two with his family, however, Ismail Hakki had to leave again, this time to fight on the Eastern Front. There he would die, fighting against the Arabs and their “recalcitrant” English leader, T. E. Lawrence, who would become known as Lawrence of Arabia. My grandfather’s body would presumably be interred somewhere in southeastern Turkey. According to the tradition prevailing in the family, Atatürk had his aide-de-camp carry my grandfather’s handgun and sword back to Biga and presented to my grandmother, along with Atatürk’s promise that after the war he would find the family and see to their needs. But even before the war ended, my grandmother and her children moved to Istanbul, where they could get help from close relatives.
ALIN YAZISI (FOREHEAD INSCRIPTION)
Growing up in Kadiköy on the Asian side of the Bosporus, my father and his older brother, Muammer, both aspired to make their careers in the military, following in the footsteps of their late father. Just a few weeks apart they reported to the military recruiting office, had their interviews, took the military college’s entrance examination, and they both passed. My father presented some dubious documentation showing him to be two years older than he actually was. When they underwent physical examinations, my uncle passed with flying colors; my father, however, was told that he suffered from a heart murmur and could not be admitted. His hopes dashed, he staggered around dejected, tears streaming down his cheeks. After wandering listlessly for some time, he found himself at a ferry dock. The ferry was just pulling away from the dock. My father used to say, any other time, he would have just jumped onto the ferry, as he had done numerous times before, but that day it was not be — it was not “written on his forehead!” That day it was not his fate to take the ferry and go home. He was a lifelong believer in fate – “If it is written on your forehead, it will come to pass,” he would always say. He sat on a bench on the pier, utterly disheartened. Then suddenly an elderly gentleman appeared, and sensing my father’s despair, stopped and queried, “What is the matter, son?”
My father answered that he had always hoped to become an officer, but he was denied admission to the academy. The man appeared genuinely sympathetic. Attempting to console my father, he remarked, “There are so many different professions, and a good looking, clean cut young man like you should be able to become or do anything you set your mind to. You could become a doctor, an architect, or even a diplomat. You have a distinguished demeanor.” My father, his voice breaking, responded, “My greatest wish in the world was to become a soldier, just as my father had been.” Without raising his eyes from the ground, he continued, “But I’ve just been told that I am suffering from a heart murmur that will keep me out of the academy.” He still had the x-ray film in a folder tucked under his arm, which the older man suddenly noticed. At this point, the man revealed to my father that he was doctor — a professor at the medical school. “May I see the film,” he asked. Then removing the film from its sleeve, he held it up to the sunlight, and studied it for a full minute, squinting, scanning. Then, with a smile, he told my father, “Let’s go together to the hospital.”
When they got to the hospital a medical board was in session. That did not stop the old man. He barged into the room, my father right behind him. Again, he removed the film from the sleeve and held it in front of a light box. “Gentleman,” he announced, “…you have made the same mistake again. There is nothing wrong with this young man’s heart.” He went on to explain their misdiagnosis. To make his point, he placed his stethoscope on my father’s chest and listened for the characteristic sounds of a heart murmur. “There is no swishing or whistling, beyond the normal ‘Lub-Dub’ sound.” He reiterated, “Classic misdiagnosis!” It turned out that this remarkably kind man was in reality one of the most senior physicians on the medical school faculty and a one-time instructor to most of the other physicians in the room.
The peaks and valleys of that day’s emotional roller coaster ride — missing the ferry, meeting the professor of medicine, having the faulty diagnosis corrected, and being admitted into the military college — “were all written on his forehead!” Thereafter, my father would always have an abiding admiration for physicians, and especially for those in cardiology. He lived into his nineties, and he spoke with bursting pride of his grandson, Michael Kemal Atalay, who would earn combined MD/PhD degrees at Johns Hopkins in cardiac imaging, in advent of doing medical internship at Harvard as “Dr. Dr. Atalay.”
Built in 1845 on the Asian Shore of the Bosporus, the military college, Kuleli, is an unusually prepossessing building that derives its name from the two prominent flanking towers (Figure 4).
The years at the academy were successful for both brothers. They enjoyed their time, they studied hard, and they made lifelong friends. Many would also accompany them in their rise through the military ranks. Both brothers were successful athletes, starters on the school’s soccer team, my father as left wing, his brother as the high-scoring center forward. Father would often speak of his brother, about his extraordinary prowess on the soccer field. But in academics it was my father who would excel and leave a mark. He graduated in the class of 1930. Not long afterwards, at an engagement party for his close friend, Nüzhet Bulca, he would meet the guest of honor, none other than Kemal Atatürk, the beloved President.
As my father recalled the memories of that day thirty years ago, Carol Jean I remained transfixed. My mother, who, of course, had known the story all along, was just happy that we were the story. But then I interrupted, asking rhetorically, "You told him then that you and your brother were the sons of his oldest friend, Ismail Hakki?” “No, I couldn’t…” he said, “I didn’t want any favoritism. If Ataturk had found out who I was, he might have taken me as an aide, and I would never have been able to prove myself.” (He was modest. He was shy.)
A few years later he would take the examinations that would gain him acceptance into the Army War College and the status of Kurmay. He could now realistically aspire to attain the highest ranks in the army.
THE KÖKDEMIR FAMILY
My maternal grandfather, Bahattin Kökdemir, born in Sinop, on the Black Sea, was a young physician who had received his medical degree in Istanbul. Shortly after graduation in 1915, he married my grandmother, Refika. They had three children — the first child, a son named, Ertugrul Pertev, was born in 1916; their second child, my mother, Nigar Esma Atalay, would be born three years later; the third child, Hüsrev, would come almost a generation later,
in 1938. (My grandfather had, however, been married once before, but that marriage had ended in divorce. From that marriage he had also a son and a daughter.) The family posed for a portrait in Istanbul (ca 1921), my uncle approximately five, my mother just two. My grandfather is seen wearing the customary fez, my grandmother a scarf over her head.
Then in 1926 when my grandfather was awarded a Rockefeller fellowship to undertake postgraduate work in medicine at Harvard, he would journey to the United States with his family, and spend the next three years on the East Coast of America. After a year at Harvard, he was given an extension of his fellowship and allowed to transfer to Johns Hopkins Medical Center, ostensibly to receive additional training at America’s other great medical institution. Accordingly, the family moved to Baltimore for the next two years. In 1929, with my mother and uncle — ten and thirteen years old, respectively — my grandparents returned to Turkey and settled in Ankara. The children had learned to speak flawless English, a skill that would serve them well the rest of their lives. Shortly after they returned to Turkey with some newly acquired western social habits — they found that Turkey was amidst some of Atatürk’s social reforms, launched during their absence. Western style clothing was in, the traditional Middle Eastern garb — fez, turban, veil — was out; the Ottoman-Arabic script, written from right-to-left, was being replaced by the Roman alphabet, written from left-to-right — reforms that my grandparents welcomed, reforms that would make their own adjustment in returning to Turkey so very much easier.
In Ankara my grandfather was to become a successful physician, an internist,
as well as a specialist in public hygiene. As a physician he was well known to administer to rich and poor alike, but especially the poor! As a child I remember occasions when patients would pay him with a pot of yogurt, a live chicken from their chicken coop, or not at all. And as a public hygienist with a pair of books that he had published on the subject and in the late 30s he would serve as a member of parliament, a mebbus, after being nominated by Dr. Refik Saydam, the celebrated Minister of Public Health. But disillusioned by politics and politicians after just one term in office, he returned to his medical practice.
When my parents first met, my mother was only seventeen years old, my father 26. She was a student in a local school, and my father, a young officer ontemporary assignment, teaching military science at a nearby high school. It was not long before they became enamored with each other, but maintained a proper distance. Much, much later my father would confess to me, rather sheepishly, that they had once met secretly, having arranged to meet in front of the movie theater in the downtown square, Ulus Meydani. There they would see a film together, come out of the theater, still maintaining the most proper decorum, and then bid good-bye. But they would not forget each other.
One day a few months later, my father, uncommonly bashful, made an unusually brazen move. He telephoned my grandfather, the physician, and arranged for a private visit – not seeking any professional service. He was there to ask for my mother’s hand in marriage. He explained to my grandfather that his own father had died in WWI, that he himself was a military officer who received a modest, but dependable salary, but that each month he faithfully gave a portion of his salary to his widowed mother.
My grandfather was impressed by the personal visit —
untraditional in that no go-betweens were involved. He had seen during his years in America that intermediaries were not involved in asking for a girl’s hand. But about giving his blessings to the marriage, he admitted his reticence, “I don’t want my only daughter to be married to a soldier who might get killed one of these days, and leave her a widow. I must take this under advisement. I will get back to you.” Then after a pause, he continued, “Please, call us in a month.” He even gave a date for my father to call again.
In discussing the dilemma with my grandmother, there was agreement: he was verypolite, he was deeply devoted to his mother. And he was handsome — “Eli yüzü düzgün.” But there was that seemingly insurmountable barrier, he was a soldier! And surrounded by hostile neighbors, the country seemed continually on the brink of war. There was also another factor to take into account: a successful and well-heeled engineer had also asked for my mother’s hand, and a man not in constant jeopardy of being inducted into the military. The conundrum was not trivial. My mother expressed privately to my grandmother that it was the young officer that she distinctly preferred.
After my grandparents discussed the issue between themselves, they decided that my grandfather should consult his own mother, then living in Sinop. Accordingly, he wrote a letter to my great grandparents, expressing his own uncertainty. The answer, however, would not come for several weeks.
A SECOND MEETING WITH ATATÜRK
A ball was held in 1937 in Ankara at the Halk Evi with members of my father’s military company assigned to serve as guards and ushers. Among the guests would be Maresal Fevzi Çakmak, five-star general and Secretary of Defense; Ismet Inönü, Vice-President, perennial “Second Man” of Turkey, and future president; and the incomparable Kemal Atatürk himself. My father was standing near an entrance, when Atatürk entered the grand ballroom of the Halk Evi followed by his retinue comprised of Ismet Inönü, Fevzi Çakmak, and other leaders. When he saw my father, Atatürk gestured to him, appearing to have recognized him. After a short pause, he actually started walking over to my father, who immediately ran over to greet him. Atatürk asked, “Weren’t you introduced to me at commencement ceremony at the Kuleli a few years ago?” My father answered nervously that he was. “Then young man, come and sit with us at our table.”
As my father’s friends, the other young officers, all looked on in puzzled silence, my father was shown his seat — between Atatürk and Inönü.
His anxiety must have been palpable. Atatürk then asked him, “Do you take raki?” (Raki is the familiar anise-flavored liquor in the Eastern Mediterranean, variously known as “ouzo” to the Greeks and “arak” to the Arabs. The clear liquid turns translucent, milky white, when water is added. It is believed that over two thousand years ago, the powerful relative of liquor was already known in the area. According to tradition, Aristotle, the legendary philosopher and teacher of Alexander the Great, offered his pupil the drink telling him that it was “lion’s milk.”) My father had never tasted raki before, but he nodded that he did, “After all, it was Atatürk asking him.” After he gulped down one glass, a kadeh, he was immediately offered another, and another. And he was in no position to refuse.
Then as dinner was being served, Atatürk asked, “Are you married? Do you have any children?” My father, his tongue now altogether liberated by the raki, mentioned being smitten by a beautiful young woman, but that her father, an eminent physician, was reluctant to let his daughter marry a military man. He also mentioned that he was still hopeful, after all, the father had not said, “No!” The normally unflappable Atatürk became noticeably quiet; then he gestured to his yaver, his aide-de-camp, to approach. He whispered something in the man’s ear, and the man departed. All very baffling!
But just then the musicians started playing Harman Dali, a folk dance of Ankara. The dance is evocative of the Jewish folk dance, the Hava Nagila, where the participants form a chain, but in this instance the dance is performed by a group of men only. Atatürk stood up, and as if on cue, the other members of the high brass all rose. Then Atatürk turned to my father, “Kemal bey, won’t you join us?” By then, my father was entirely overcome with emotion, honored to be sitting next to Atatürk at the high table, imbibing raki with his hero, and now participating in a folk dance with him and the other commanders. His friends, all lined up along the periphery of the room, watched in utter disbelief! Atatürk led the dance, holding a handkerchief in his raised right hand, and my father’s right hand with his left. My father, in turn, held onto Inönü’s right hand with his own left hand, and so on. There appeared to be a hierarchy in the chain, from Atatürk down to the lower commanders, except for my father, who was distinctly out of place, so junior in age and rank to all the rest.
After the Harman dali the men returned to the table and began to sip their coffee. Afterwards, some of the men reflexively turned their cups over, if or when a fortuneteller appeared and read their fortunes from the ground coffee deposited on the inner wall of the cup.
The foregoing represented my father’s narration during the drive down the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1967, of an incident that took place thirty years earlier, in 1937. In hearing this, I remember asking rhetorically, “Of course, you told him then that you were the son of his old friend, Ismail Hakki, didn’t you?” And, again I heard my father’s familiar refrain, “No, no, I could not bring myself to tell him. I didn’t want even the appearance of favoritism.” “Favoritism,” I said in frustration, “…it would have made him so happy to hear that you were his childhood friend’s son.”
It has now been approximately forty-years since that memorable drive to Gallipoli (Gelibolu) when my father first narrated the foregoing, and certainly it conformed with my mother’s recollections of subsequent year. But a sequel may exist, unhappily one that I remember hearing just once — again on that trip along the historic peninsula. In this version, right after the men drink up their coffee, Atatürk’s aide-de-camp reappears and whispers something in his boss’ ear. Atatürk acknowledges the message, but takes a few more sips before standing up. Again everyone at the table springs up in deference. But Atatürk turns to my father, and announces, “‘Buyrun,’ Come, Kemal Bey, we are going to visit the doctor!”
Atatürk, followed by my father and the aide-de-camp walk outside the Halk Evi, where the Presidential Düsenberg sits, along with two lines of motorcycles prepared to lead the way.
With my father sitting next to Atatürk in the car, the motorcade negotiates the five or six miles to Bahçelievler, in the suburbs of Ankara. The roar of the motorcycles brings out everyone in the neighborhood. When my grandfather steps out of his house, he cannot believe his eyes. It is my father, accompanied by his “friend.” With this kind of tacit recommendation my grandfather is not about to refuse his daughter. I hope that this version is not apocryphal — a product of my own fertile imagination — but it is not outside the realm of possibility. Rather it is just that neither my grandparents nor my parents are alive now and I cannot inquire further.
Although, the last incident is one that I was unable to confirm, the following ‘sequel-to-the-sequel’ is entirely verifiable — repeated to me over the years by my mother and grandmother. Just a day before the incident at the Halk Evi, my grandfather had received the much-anticipated letter from his father (it might be remembered that my great-grandmother had been asked to counsel on the choice of suitors — “the engineer or the officer?”). This was in accordance with a traditional, perhaps centuries old practice, calling for a designated person, most likely the matriarch of the family, to go to bed, and “sleep on it,” istihare’ye yatmak. The next morning, it was hoped, she would wake up with the answer. In my great grandfather’s letter to my grandfather there was the report: “Your mother went to bed. And when she woke up she announced that she had seen in her dreams ‘… a man standing at the foot of the bed… he was wearing a uniform!’” This clinched my grandparents’ decision. Atatürk had expressed his pleasure, my great grandparents had expressed theirs. My grandparents were sanguine with their decision. My mother was happy. And my father was ecstatic! The engineer is never mentioned in family annals again.
The next time my father contacted my grandfather would be to plan the date of the wedding. It was to be in late 1938.
As it turned out, just before the wedding could take place, Atatürk passed away in Istanbul on November 10, 1938. He died in bed in Dolmabahçe Palace on the Bosporus. When one tours the Dolmabahçe now, the guides will point to the alarm clock by his bedside, poetically stopped at 9:30am — as if by divine intervention — at the moment of his death. Although there is an apocryphal element here, there is little doubt that the collective hearts of all the Turks skipped a beat on that day. November 10th has since been recognized as the day of mourning for the ‘Father of the Turks,’ the ‘Father-Turk.’ My parents postponed their wedding for two months, finally marrying on January 8th, 1939.
In civil weddings performed in Turkey the protocol calls for the two most senior individuals in the room — sometimes celebrities, often officials or elders — to serve as the witnesses, one witness for the bride, the other for the groom. I would like to think that had Atatürk not died when he did, had my father approached him and told him about his own father, Ismail Hakki, then Atatürk perhaps would personally have been one of those witnesses at the wedding.
MY FAMILY POST-ATATÜRK
Before he died Atatürk had foreseen the war that was going to erupt in Europe, and had impressed on Ismet Inönü that Turkey was not to participate, but “to sit this one out!” In 1939 the war broke out, and the countries of Europe started being pulled in one by one.
Both the Allies and the Axis Powers began to impress on Turkey to join their respective sides. Churchill reminded Turkey that it had been on the wrong side of the fray during the WWI, and he made it amply clear that this time around it had better stand on the Allied side; and Hitler, for the opposition, argued the converse, “…better to side with the eventual winners.” Inönü, Atatürk’s always loyal right-hand man, however, was determined to follow Atatürk’s directive, and Turkey would remain neutral.
Between 1939 and 1942 my father was assigned a post in the Office of Military Intelligence at the Defense Department. And among his tasks was to serve as an domestic currier and convey important messages received by the Minister of Defense to President Inönü, occupying the Pembe Kösk (literally the “Pink Palace,” Turkey’s White House).
By far the most memorable message that he personally remembered carrying to President Inönü from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs came from the Americans. Roosevelt urged Turkey to remain neutral in the war. The message read, “After the war ends, Turkey is needed as a bulwark against the drive for expansion anticipated from Stalin and his Communist cohorts. We will transfer to your armed forces some of the most advanced weapons we are sending to the Allied Forces.” Turkey did remain neutral. After the war, the Marshall Plan was launched, as was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), inviting Turkey as a charter member. Both of these developments bolstered Turkey’s western leaning, entirely compatible with Atatürk’s vision.
When I was around two years old and living with my parents in Ankara, my father would often go off on courier duty to embassies in Europe. He would take the train, frequently the Orient Express, to various capitals – Axis, Allied, occupied and neutral alike. Because of security concerns, he was ordered by his superiors in Ankara to always rent an entire compartment, and to plug the keyholes with candle wax lest enemy agents gassed him to get to the papers that he was transmitting back and forth between Ankara and its embassies. Now, as I peruse his passports from the war years, I can see that his visits included the Turkish Embassies in Lisbon, Paris, London, Bucharest, Berlin, and Moscow. Note: the page for Berlin features a Swastika
Less than a year after the termination of hostilities, in January of 1946 my father was appointed assistant military attaché to London. Just five years old, I remember well sailing from Istanbul,
by way of Izmir to Cairo; then after several weeks in Cairo, flying to London, with a stopover in Malta. The photograph of my father, wearing his uniform, was taken when he assumed the post in London in 1946. My sister Gülseren was born in London in 1946, but after just seven months, would be returned by my visiting grandparents to Turkey, where they would take care of her. Two years later my father was promoted to Lt. Colonel and assigned to a new post, as assistant military attaché to Paris.
After Paris, a pair of domestic assignments would follow — two years in Sivas, then an assignment in Ankara, as an assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff, Org. Nuri Yamut. These assignments would be followed in 1953, with another foreign assignment — this time to the “sweetestof all plums” among diplomatic posts. He was assigned as the military attaché to Washington, DC.
About the time that my father’s assignment to Washington expired in 1955, I was awarded the War Memorial Scholarship, and enrolled at St. Andrew’s School, in Middletown, Delaware. Founded in 1930 by the duPont Family, this is an academically rigorous and unusually beautiful school featured in the 1989 Robin Williams movie, Dead Poets’ Society. (Indeed, I was serving as a member of the Board of Trustees of the school when the film was made.) During the three years I spent at St. Andrew’s, and subsequently the 9-10 years I spent doing undergraduate and graduate work in theoretical physics at a variety of institutions in the United States and England, my parents were living in Turkey. My father had assignments to Malatya (Figure II.7), then Gelibolu (Gallipoli), followed by Izmir, where he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General in 1960.
During the decade of the 60s, my father had assignments to the NATO Headquarters in Izmir. Then he was based in Ankara, where he served as Commandant of the Jandarma, Undersecretary of Defense, then in Istanbul as the Commander of the First Army. In 1967, when he was receiving his final promotion, I had the singular honor of pinning a fourth star on each of his epaulets. I had missed all his other promotions through the ranks, and this was my very last chance.
REVISITING ISMAIL HAKKI
My father frequently spoke of his memory of his own father’s visit to Biga in 1916, a memory he always described as being a “dreamlike vision” — formed when he was just five years old. He would retire in 1970, but not before another transformative incident took place. In 1968, fifty-two years
after his father had died, my father, now as Commandant of the Jandarma, was on a visit to the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, ostensibly to inspect troops. One day as he drove through the small village of Silvan he was approached by a village elder. The man, after introducing himself, claimed to my father’s astonishment that he had personally known his father, Ismail Hakki. And he said that he had followed my father’s progress from a distance, through his assignments and promotions through the ranks. He added that he knew where Ismail Hakki was buried. My father, stunned by this revelation, accompanied the old man to a nearby graveyard, where he actually saw for the first time his father’s weathered headstone, the site of his grave. The headstone was inscribed in old Turkish, right-to-left, “Major Ismail Hakki, son of Yusuf Ziya, Chief Justice of Thessalonica.” The marker also identified Ismail Hakki’s brigade as being based in Ohri, where my father was born in 1910. Ohri was then part of the Ottoman Empire and is now a town in Macedonia. My father had a local stonemason build a slightly more elaborate memorial, and the inscription in old Turkish replaced by one in modern Turkish (using letters of the Roman Alphabet).
I had always known that my maternal great grandfather (whom I still remember from my childhood and subsequently from a myriad family photographs) had been the chief justice in the City of Sinop on the Black Sea. But from the inscription on Ismail Hakki’s gravestone there was now the revelation of my paternal great grandfather’s name, and that he also had been a chief justice.
EPILOGUE — DISTINGUISHED LIVES
I have long envied the Irish who organize wakes for their dead, celebrating good lives and not just mourning for them. To be sure, we may miss immensely those departed. Leonardo da Vinci’s words, “A life well-lived is long,” resonates with meaning for both of my parents, who left remarkable memories, lived such wonderful lives. My mother died in 1993 just barely into her seventies —
somewhat young for our times. She had lived an astounding life – recognized by everyone who met her for her wisdom and selflessness, her wit and humor, the elegance and astonishingbeauty. When General Matthew Ridgway (1895-1993) and his wife, “Penny,” came to visit Turkey in 1952, my mother was assigned as Mrs. Ridgway’s escort during her visit. Indeed, this turned out to be a time of immense ambivalence for my mother – she was with the Ridgways in Ankara, when her beloved father passed away in Istanbul in September 1952. A year or two later, when my father was serving as the military attaché to Washington, the Ridgways came to visit us in our home — Ridgeway at the pinnacle of the armed forces of the United States, my father a colonel in the Turkish Army, and indeed they all maintained a correspondence for years afterwards. Fifteen years later when Charles de Gaule came to Ankara on a visit, my mother was assigned the seat next to the great man at the official state dinner. She exuded charisma, and she spoke French as well as English.
By any measure, my father had a long and distinguished career. Having graduated from Kuleli in 1930, he retired in Istanbul in 1970. My sister and I gave a surprise 50th wedding anniversary party for our parents on January 8, 1989, and some of their closest and oldest friends were in attendance. We showed slides (several of which have been integrated into this story). My mother died in 1993 after a long and debilitating illness. At the time, I tried getting in touch with her friend, Penny Ridgway, only to find out that General Ridgway had also passed away that year, at age ninety-eight years.
My father lived a longer life than my mother — having been born nine years earlier than she was and surviving nine years past her death — died on February 14, 2003. He lived to see five of his eight great grandchildren. A grandson and a great grandson were named after him. His defining virtues had been his kindness and wisdom, his unassailable honesty and his legendary modesty; and above all his graciousness. He would never open a door, without insisting on someone else going through it ahead of him. He would never see guests to the door, and not wait outside until the guests had entered their cars and departed. He never spoke ill of anyone else. Finally, I cannot remember a day that passed when he did not mention Atatürk with deep veneration!
How appropriate it was that such a good and honest man, so full of love, would die on St. Valentine’s Day. Late in the summer of 2003, as I completed the manuscript for a book on Leonardo da Vinci that I had been writing for several years, I felt the painful ambivalence in penning the dedication, of noting the terminal year of his life.
“To the memory of an extraordinary man
— soldier, statesman, father —
General Kemal Atalay (1910-2003).”
To contact Bulent Atalay to arrange a guest lecture or book signing visit, call (540) 654-1429 or write batalay@umw.edu
Atalay Family Website