Microsoft Word 1 Arif thesis cover final doc

CHAPTER 7 – ERGENEKON 
203 
in the War of Independence. In the epilogue to 
Ergenekon 
the author expresses his 
disappointment quite unambiguously. His original hopes can only be expressed in 
the words he used at that time. When he comes to write 
Yaban 
and 
Ankara 
the same 
doubt and disappointment, which he expresses in the epilogue to 
Ergenekon
, can be 
sublimated in fiction.
The publication of 
Ergenekon 
needs also to be placed in a political context. As 
summarised in Chapter 2, there was a significant consolidation of the Kemalist 
regime in 1926 with a thorough purge of the previously tolerated opposition and of 
former Unionists. The legitimation of this purge included a claim to a monopoly of 
resistance initiative by Mustafa Kemal, a claim set out at enormous length in the 
Nutuk
delivered between 15-20 October 1927 and then published for anyone to read 
who could. Halide Edip, whose husband Adnan (Adıvar), had been prominent in the 
opposition, had already left the country. In her 
Turkish Ordeal 
published in English 
in the security of exile she could afford to present a more nuanced portrait of 
Mustafa Kemal than was produced by the subject himself in 
Nutuk.
His demand for 
absolute obedience has been noted in Chapter 4.
 
Two pages before the account of 
this episode there is a pen portrait of Mustafa Kemal which is not very flattering
4
:
He was by turns cynical, suspicious, unscrupulous and satanically 
shrewd. He bullied, he indulged in cheap street-corner heroics… Of 
course, one knew all the time that there were men around him who were 
greatly his superior in intellect and moral backbone, and far above him 
in culture and education… Take any man from the street who is shrewd, 
selfish, and utterly unscrupulous, give him the insistence and histrionics 
of a hysterical woman who is willing to employ any wile to satisfy her 
inexhaustible desires, then view him through the largest magnifying 
glass you can find – and you ‘ll see Mustafa Kemal Pasha.
4
Adıvar 1928, 185 

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