A couple of military leaders from recent history have caught my attention and interest lately. General Tito (mentioned below) of Yugoslavia, and one Mustafa Kemal, otherwise known by the epithet “The Father of the Turks,” Ataturk.
Ataturk was the bane of the Ottoman empire. He brought sovereignty to the people of Turkey, ending the Caliphate and causing the last Ottoman rulers to exile themselves to England. And so the first world war claimed its only major world power casualty; this despite the fact that the crippled empire desperately wanted to remain neutral and fought only one significant battle—one battle that it conclusively won.
Ataturk is very fondly remembered in Turkey, even today. He was, by all accounts, a man larger than life; and now larger than his own mortality it seems. I've heard him described as a man out of his own time, a throw back to glorious old days and legends of conquerors; perhaps something like Alexander the Great, the young Macedonian who marched over Turkey and is also fondly remembered for his benevolence. Ataturk was born of the same stuff as those awe inspiring legends; because Ataturk was born in battle, in glory and guts and passion, in the moment of his most remembered command, in victory on the beaches. This is how the Ottomans lost the war: they made Mustafa Kemal into Ataturk, the man who could order an entire division to die, and a nation to live.
One brings with it the other, don't you see? The ancient Greeks knew it. The Turks knew it, also. They wouldn't trust so greatly as to follow him into revolution. But for this man, tens of thousands had followed his man's outstretched pointing hand and traded their lives for a few seconds of diversion on the battlefield. He was to be trusted; and believed; and followed.
And he revolutionised them. Wear hats, he said, write like an Englishman, we are modern men now! And so the new president and the new nation took on the image of those who had once been so close, within easy throwing distance in the next trench. It was Ataturk who brought the sides together after the war; he decreed that the fallen from both sides would be accepted into the Turkish bosom and receive the great respect of the locals. Perhaps he understood that both sides hadn't really being fighting each other; in fact, in may ways, they were all fighting side by side, for the one and same goal.
The ancient Greeks understood this, also. This was the same region as their greatest, most remembered and most import war, after all. This is were the subjects of millions of reliefs, sculptures and paintings had arisen. This was the birth place of the Hellenistic identity, where the Adonis ideal arose. This was where ten thousand black ships arrived, under a weak pretence for war, to find for themselves the greatest and longest lived glory in history. They held siege for 9 years, fighting as the opportunity arose, and waiting for the moment when noble and skilful opponent would stand and reckon them, and they would engage in one on one combat to the death. The stories were passed around with greatest reverence for centuries before Homer could collect them up. And even today, the siege of Troy is recognised as special moment of history, a profound singularity.
In the First World War, the Great War, Hellen wasn't a beautiful woman, however. She was Russia, and the pretence was to open the straights for her supply shipments. And yet, there were no Russians fighting there, just confused troupers, like the Indian Muslims who heard the call for prayer and wondered, who are we fighting?
And yet, the allies found something there, also, in that mythical land. They didn't fight with against their enemy, they fought with their, soon to be glorious, enemy. Because there is a belief that great nations are born in war, a belief that would seem evident from history. There is something that flows from war, something otherwise unattainable. It made the nonconformist Kemal into Ataturk, it made the Mycenaeans, the Minoans and the Cycladeans into Greeks, by way of shared heritage. But what did it make of the wanderlust Australians and New Zealanders who suffered from the lack of a war back home?
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