Turks visit Ataturk’s mausoleum in record numbers
More than a million Turks visited Anitkabir on Nov. 10, marking the 75th anniversary of the death of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of modern-day Turkey, in protest of the current Islamist-based government.
Telling the story of Turkey to foreigners who have no knowledge of the country is becoming a true challenge, especially for those critical of the policies of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, for it risks portraying the country in an absolutely negative light. That would present an unfair image of Turkey, doing injustice to all the accomplishments that make it unique in its immediate neighborhood. Moreover, despite its downward economic outlook and the growing concerns over its current account deficit, Turkey’s economy has been doing relatively well since 2008, when the international markets were swept by monetary crisis. In this light, Turkey’s positive economic trend has had a direct impact on the betterment of the infrastructure in all the provinces, cities across the nation. It’s a direct plus adding to the growth of the country.
While acknowledging all that, one also may ask why some 1,890,615 people visited Anitkabir — the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founding father of modern-day Turkey — on Nov. 10, marking the 75th anniversary of his death. This number of people paying their respects at Anitkabir set a record. When the country was hit by its worst economic crisis in February 2001, for example, Turks did not rally in great numbers around this kind of symbolically important site to protest the government’s bad management, but they have been taking to the streets since the day Abdullah Gul was appointed by the Turkish parliament in 2007 to the presidency or, more recently, during the Gezi Park protests in June 2013. The question is, then, why there is such unrest and discontent in this society, if its democracy is being strengthened and its economy is flourishing? Why do the people feel the need to make such a statement by showing up in massive numbers at Anitkabir?