The Abolition of the
Caliphate
The year 1924 saw the
abolition of the Caliphate. On the 2nd March the GNA passed a law
deposing the Caliph and abolishing his office, "the function of the
Caliph being essentially included in the meaning and connotation of the
Government of the Republic". All princes and princesses would have to
leavve Turkey within ten days. Other secularising laws were also passed
abolishing the office of Şeyh-ül İslam,
and the Ministry of Şeriat and Evkaf, and replacing it by a new Department of
Prime Ministers' Office - the Directorate of Religious Affairs. Religious
courts were abolished on 8th April, and on 20th April a
new constitution was accepted. At the end of February, R.C.Lindsay reported
confidentially to the new British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, Ramsay
MacDonald, about the possibility of getting rid of the Caliph and his family,
upon which D.G.Osborne made the following comments:
"...The Caliphate of the
House of Osman is abolished and all the members of the house are to follow the
Caliph and the late Sultan into exile. It is an historical event of the first
importance. Their property is to revert to the state. Justice and education
are to be entirely purged of their religious associations. The policy of
disestablishment or laicization is carried to its logical limit...Kemal has
always been determined to make a clean sweep of all contributory causes of of
the decay of the Turkish Empire and to give the Turkish state a fair and fresh
start. Hence the dissappearance of capitulations, the expulsion of the Greeks
and Armenians, the repudiation of Constantinople as the capital, the overthrow
of the Sultanate and now the abolition of the Caliphate and -which is almost
as important- of Islamic law. A tremendous revolution has been effected by
entirely pacific means, and it is impossible not to admire the courage,
determination and statesmanship of Kemal. The effects on Islam are
incalculable...it is not easy to estimate the precise significance of the
Turkish action. Turkey has repudiated the religious and political leadership
of Islam technically inherent in the holding of the Caliphate by the head of
the Turkish state...It seems to leave the way open to Kemal, as President, to
assume the functions of Caliph if this be the ambition."
William Tyrell added on 4th
March : "I should hesitate in my tribute to Kemal's statesmanship until
we are in a better position to judge the effects of secularization in Turkey
and the rest of the Mohammedan world, though I believe the effect upon the
latter will be more considerable."
Meanwhile the Caliph was
removed from his palace at dawn on 4th March and taken by motor to
Çatalca. There he was put on the express train and sent to Berne. The New
York Tribune
observed on this occasion that Kemal's decision to abolish the Caliphate might
have had a practical political motive, as the "powerful religious
caste" might have attempted to plot counter-revolution through that
institution. Kemal preferred secular education and civilisation to ancient
Moslem theocracy. Under the Republic, "Turkish religious fanaticism"
had withered, and the dominating fact was that the old and the new Turkey were
separated by an "impassable gulf", concluded the paper.
The New York Times
observed that, when the Turkish national regime was fighting for its life, the
Caliphate was one of its strongest assets; if Kemal was now prepared to
discard so valuable a trump, it must be that he felt that his country's
position was secure. The Christian Science Monitor
said that the Kemalists had turned the course of Turkish destiny definitely
towards the West, and by abolishing the Caliphate had challenged all Islam to
make a similar choice.
Meanwhile, the president of
the association of Ulema
, Al Azhar, published to the Muslim World on 15th March 1924 a
press statement by the Grand Sheikh, repudiating Mustafa Keal's action in its
entirety. Other telegrams of criticism were sent to Kemal by Abdul Hamid, a
member of the Hizb el Watani
in Egypt, and by Shaukat Ali of India; but Kemal replied that this was an
internal issue for the Turks. British consul C.A. Creig reported from Sarajevo
on 11th March that the expulsion of the Caliph apparently awakened
among the local "Ulema"
and educated Muslim classes a feeling of despondent bewilderment mingled
within dignition towards Mustafa Kemal and the Ankara Assembly, whose drastic
action, they feared, would weaken and isolate the one state on whose revival
hopes were set. Similar protests and telegrams of support came from all over
the Muslim world; e.g. British Cosul J.H. Monahan (Tripoli) reported on 22nd
April that, although the Ulema
of Tripoli protested to Mustafa Kemal against the abolition of the Caliphate;
the educated Muslims there had much symphaty for him as one ready to defy
European ascendancy. On the other hand, British Consul Crosy reported on 2nd
June from Batavia that the abolition of the Caliphate had created little
excitement among the natives of the country, or among the Arab community some
of whom professed to see in this a wise move on Kemal's part, having for its
object definite separation of religion and state. They even applauded Kemal's
policy on the ground that the princess of the House of Osman had been
corrupted by British gold, and that they had for that reason merited the
decree of expulsion passed against them.
Source
: "Atatürk-The Founder of Modern Turkey" by Salahi R.Sonyel,
Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi,
Ankara, 1989
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