Turkey and Iran: Nationalism and Modernization Compared

Introduction: Two Empires in Crisis

In the early 1920s, both Turkey and Iran found themselves in an identity crisis. Formerly famous for their respective empires — now crumbling — they were in need of resurgence after the previous institutions of government had failed them. Mustafa Kemal (1923), later known as Ataturk, meaning "father of Turks," and Reza Shah (1925) came to power and contributed to the formation of the modern national identity in each country. They are both celebrated leaders who generated feelings of nationalism and brought their people together to acknowledge and take pride in their national identity.

It was a revolutionary time for the Turks, and Ataturk was determined to bring the nation from a "backward" land — compared to the developed West — to a more "respectable" nation built on sophisticated and progressive ideals and culture. As a true nationalist, he aimed to create a homogeneous, ethnically Turkish state. Likewise, in Iran, the Persians led by Reza Shah began a course of modernization, which included shifting to a constitutional monarchy — lasting until the 1979 revolution — and adopting an internationalist perspective similar to Turkey's. This paper compares and contrasts the initiatives that Ataturk and Reza Shah undertook to transform their respective citizenries into Turkish and Iranian nationalists, with a brief discussion of the effectiveness of their reforms in light of more recent changes in each country.

Ataturk and the Kemalist Project in Turkey

In post-Ottoman Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk emerged from Gallipoli as a hero of the Turks, having fended off the British. Turkey's geographical position between Europe and Asia made it a critically important region from a political point of view. In 1923, when Ataturk came to power, he leveraged that position to demonstrate to both sides that Turkey could be a respected nation among the world's dominant powers. Ataturk recognized this importance and thereafter set upon a course of leadership that involved modernizing the Turkish nation and initiating something unique in the Middle East: a program to secularize the country and separate religion from politics and government.

The Kemalist ideology rested on the belief that westernizing the nation was the surest path toward making it both modern and secular. In reforms that came to be known as the "Kemalist project," a series of political, legal, cultural, social, and economic policy changes were implemented to westernize the nation (Lawlor). Ataturk's strategy involved banning the caliphate, shutting down the religious courts, outlawing the fez (an orthodox religious symbol), modeling the workweek on the European calendar by adopting the European weekend, criminalizing polygamy, and promoting women's rights (Lawlor). This sweeping set of changes across Turkish institutions was enforced to put the country on a fast track toward adapting a Western lifestyle and abandoning the old Turkish model.

Ataturk pushed to westernize Turkey by adopting a constitution similar to those of its Western neighbors in Europe. Rather than presenting Turkey as a Muslim state, the idea was to rebrand it as a secular nation-state with European progressive ideals at its heart. Like Reza Shah, Ataturk focused on updating the country's infrastructure through reforms in the courts, in the law-making branches of government, and in the economic system. By removing the caliphate from power, Ataturk cemented the progressive push for secularization: Turkey would be a country where clerics were not rulers. He oversaw a new penal code based on Italian law, shut down the Muslim court system, and began a methodical campaign to remove Islam from political discourse.

Even in the social realm, a process of de-Islamification was enacted. Turkey sponsored the State Art and Sculpture Museum, a significant move because Muslims had traditionally avoided sculpture — an ancient Greco-Western-Christian art form — as it resembled idolatry. By promoting sculpture, Ataturk sought to initiate a cultural reform that removed Islamic traditions from the core of Turkish identity and replaced them with a modern, European, and progressive foundation. At the same time, Ataturk promoted the local and ethnic cultures of the Turks, including regional folk arts. New schools were established, mirroring similar initiatives in Iran, and the two countries essentially paralleled one another in their efforts to reform their respective societies and disconnect them from their Islamic pasts.

Reza Shah and Modernization in Iran

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the Communists seized control of the Russian Empire, the Persian Empire became a strategic access point for the British, who sought to press against Russia from the south. Reza Khan — before he became Shah — was engaged by the British to assist on this front. Reza Shah emerged from the triangle of motivations involving the British, the Soviet front, and the Persians to lead the Persian people into the next chapter of their history. He did so first by overthrowing the Qajar dynasty. As Shah, he initiated reforms designed to remove clerical influence from the country's governance.

Reza Shah wanted Iran to reflect the cultural ideals of the West: schools that were European-oriented, women who could participate in society outside the home, and an economy capable of engaging in capitalist enterprise. These reforms were supported by an extensive modernization of the country's infrastructure. The Trans-Iranian Railway was built, the University of Tehran was opened, and the Women's Awakening was commenced. The Women's Awakening petitioned for the removal of the Muslim veil — the chador — from public life, though the religious community objected. Reza Shah also allowed Jews to move out of the ghettos where they had been isolated, and he sought a more collaborative relationship with Jewish community leaders.

Reza Shah paid close attention to the military and supported strong ties with the armed forces. He also promoted the concept of Iranian ethnicity and national identity by requesting that the United Nations and the nations of the world refer to the country as Iran rather than Persia — "Iran" being the name the Iranian people had historically used for themselves, whereas "Persia" was the term the West had long applied to them.

Conclusion

Khomeini helped rebuild the "absolutist nature of the state's highest religious authority" and ended the secularization of Iran by rejuvenating the Islamic code among its populace (Mavani 807). In this manner, Iran passed from a secularized nation-state built on Western-oriented support systems to a more theocratically centered state in which religion played a fundamental role in shaping culture, national life, and political discourse. Reza Shah had laid the groundwork for progress toward modernization, but as Iranians grew suspicious of the nation's ties to Western governments, they sought a more ethnically and culturally traditional means of asserting their own authority in the face of Western intrusion — and that vehicle was Khomeini.

Thus, both Turkey and Iran moved forward from their "backward" ways to initiate progressive and modern reforms, only to see more authoritarian regimes rooted in Islam take power once more toward the end of the twentieth century and into the early twenty-first century, in each nation respectively. The trajectories of both countries serve as a compelling reminder that modernization projects, however sweeping, remain vulnerable to political and religious counter-movements that can fundamentally reshape national identity.