Abdul Hadi Pasha
Banned
LordKalvan said:You may be underestimating the strength of nationalism.
MK succeeded because he had won the survival war against the Greeks: after the victory, his charisma was large enough to enable him to force Turkey to reform.
The other situation is different: you do not have a "victorious imperator" changing the empire. You would have a bureaucracy, a committee reforming the empire. This is not a s easy as it looks: it requires a lot of compromises, and overall compromises never work completely well.
A point in case is Reza Shah in Iran: he took a lot of leafs from MK book, and if you want he had ousted the russians from Northern Iran. At the same time he was never able to change Iran as MK changed Turkey. As soon as he went, the Shia clerics started to raise their head (and you know how it ended in 1978).
Staying in Iran (just to be in an Islamic country) there was a strong Communist party in the 60s and 70s. I do not believe that Communism cannot happen in Islamic countries. Or could you tell me that it was more believable in ortodox Russia?
Anyway, I think that I am the guilty party. In a way, I hijacked the thread, to demonstrate that Ottoman Empire could not survive, while the aim was exactly the opposite one
You are operating from the highly eroneous perspective that the Ottoman Empire was anti-reformist and that MK showed up, pulled a bunch of reforms out of his ass, and forced them on a reluctant country due to the prestige gained by his victories. The truth is that the late Ottoman Empire was deeply and thoroughly committed to reform, and that nothing MK did was original to him but rather was just a continuation of existing Ottoman reforms, which he carried out using the same bureaucrats who ran the empire. His only innovations were to eliminate the monarchy and to take full credit for all reform whether he was responsible for it or not.
Also, we need to look at how successful or desirable his reforms were. As a country of 70 million with ample natural resources, Turkey is not exactly a country significant in proportion to where it should be. Just because someone was successful in implementing their policies does not make their policies valuable or correct. Hitler was very successful in implementing the Final Solution, after all.
Also, reform that evolves to suit local conditions and have the consensus support of diverse interests are far more likely to be implemented, last, and have beneficial effect than those imposed by the will of a single individual.
With regard to Iran, MK had the benefit of continuing reform programs that had 100 years of history, and had achieved legitimacy in the eyes of the populace. Reza Shah imposed reforms upon an unready population too rapidly for them to accept, and Reza was also widely considered the tool of foreign powers. He began as the commander of a Cossack Brigade. His son, Muhammed Reza Shah, if you will recall, was restored to the throne by the CIA, which did not do much for his legitimacy, and his reform program was far more reckless and ill-conceived than anything MK attempted.
Communism has never been a decisive force in any Muslim country. While some parts of the Middle Classes have briefly expirimented with Marxism, it has only been Christian minorities that have ever been attracted to it. Some groups have outwardly embraced Marxism in order to get Soviet sponsorship against their governments, and one of the Yemens even had a "Marxist" government for a while, but no significant portion of the population of any Muslim land has ever accepted it. The atheism thing just doesn't fly.