With the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, efforts to modernise the country began. The institutions and constitutions of Western states such as France, Sweden, Italy, and Switzerland were analysed and adapted according to the needs and characteristics of the Turkish nation. Highlighting the public's lack of knowledge regarding the intentions of President
Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk), the public cheered: "We are returning to the days of the
first caliphs". Atatürk's regime initiated a wide range of political, legal, religious, cultural, social, linguistic, and economic policy changes that were designed to transform the new
Republic of Turkey into a
secular and modern
nation-state. After the foundation of the
Liberal Republican Party by
Ali Fethi Okyar, religious groups joined the liberals and consequently, widespread bloody disorders took place, especially in the eastern territories. The Liberal Republican Party was dissolved on 17 November 1930 and no further attempt at a
multiparty democracy was made until 1945.
Opposition, 1924–1927 In 1924, while the "Issue of Mosul" was on the table,
Sheikh Said began to organise the
Sheikh Said Rebellion. Sheikh Said was a wealthy Kurdish hereditary chieftain (
Tribal chief) of a local
Naqshbandi order. Piran emphasised the issue of religion; he not only opposed the abolition of the Caliphate, but also the adoption of civil codes based on Western models, the closure of religious orders, the ban on polygamy and the new obligatory civil marriage. Piran stirred up his followers against the policies of the government, which he considered to be against Islam. In an effort to restore Islamic law, Piran's forces moved through the countryside, seized government offices and marched on the important cities of
Elazığ and
Diyarbakır. Members of the government saw the Sheikh Said Rebellion as an attempt at a counter-revolution. They urged immediate military action to prevent its spread. The "Law for the Maintenance of Public Order" was passed to deal with the rebellion on 4 March 1925. It gave the government exceptional powers and included the authority to shut down subversive groups (The law was eventually repealed on 4 March 1929). There were also parliamentarians in the GNA who were not happy with these changes. There were so many members who were denounced as opposition sympathisers at a private meeting of the
Republican People's Party (CHP) that Mustafa Kemal expressed his fear of being among the minority in his own party. He decided not to purge this group. The RPR was not against Mustafa Kemal's main positions as declared in its program. The program supported the main mechanisms for establishing secularism in the country and the civic law, or as stated, "the needs of the age" (article 3) and the uniform system of education (article 49). These principles were set by the leaders at the onset. The only legal opposition became a home for all kinds of differing views. During 1926, a
plot to assassinate Mustafa Kemal was uncovered in
İzmir. It originated with a former deputy who had opposed the abolition of the Caliphate and had a personal grudge. The trail turned from an inquiry of the planners of this attempt to an investigation carried out ostensibly to uncover subversive activities and actually used to undermine those with differing views regarding Kemal's cultural revolution. The sweeping investigation brought before the tribunal a large number of political opponents, including Karabekir, the leader of PRP. A number of surviving leaders of the
Committee of Union and Progress, who were at best second-rank in the Turkish movement, including
Cavid, Ahmed Şükrü, and Ismail Canbulat were found guilty of treason and hanged. During these investigations there was a link that was uncovered among the members of the PRP to the Sheikh Said Rebellion. The PRP was dissolved following the outcomes of the trial. The pattern of organized opposition, however, was broken. This action was the only broad political purge during Atatürk's presidency. Mustafa Kemal's saying, "My mortal body will turn into dust, but the Republic of Turkey will last forever," was regarded as a will after the assassination attempt.
Reforms The country saw a steady process of secular Westernization which included the unification of education; the discontinuation of religious and other titles; the closure of Islamic courts and the replacement of
Islamic canon law with a secular civil code
modeled after Switzerland's and a penal code modeled after the Italian Penal Code; recognition of the equality between the sexes and the granting of
full political rights to women on 5 December 1934; the language reform initiated by the newly founded
Turkish Language Association; replacement of the
Ottoman Turkish alphabet with the new
Turkish alphabet derived from the
Latin alphabet; the dress law (the wearing of a
fez was outlawed); the
law on family names; and many other reforms.
Development policies Infrastructure In 1927, Atatürk ordered the integration of road construction goals into development plans. Prior to this, the road network had consisted of 13,885 km of ruined surface roads, 4,450 km of stabilized roads, and 94 bridges. In 1935, a new entity was established under the government called
Şose ve Köprüler Reisliği (Headship of Roads and Bridges) which would drive the development of new roads after World War II.
1927 census The first census of the republic was on 1927. The census gathered data about literacy, economic and social values. File:Density of Population - excluding unliviable areas-1927.png|Population density, corrected File:Density of Population-Turkey-1927.png|Population density File:Taxation-Turkey-1927.png|Taxation File:1927-widowhood-Turkey.png|Widowhood File:1927-Ratio of Prime Adults-Turkey.png|Adults File:Literacy-1924-Turkey.png|Literacy
Opposition, 1930–1931 leader
Ali Fethi Okyar, his daughter and Atatürk in
Yalova On August 11, 1930, Mustafa Kemal decided to try a multiparty movement once again and asked Ali Fethi Okyar to establish a new party. Even though, at times, he did not appear to be a democrat in his actions, he always supported the idea of eventually building a
civil society; a system of totality of voluntary civic and social organizations and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society as opposed to the force-backed structures of the state. In one of his many speeches about the importance of democracy, Mustafa Kemal said in the year 1933:
Kurdish rebellions There were several
Kurdish rebellions in the 1920s and 1930s:
Koçkiri Rebellion,
Sheikh Said Rebellion,
Dersim Rebellion,
Ararat rebellion. They all were suppressed by the Turkish Army. In particular, due to
Dersim Rebellion in 1937–38 thousands of
Alevi Kurds were killed by the Turkish Army and thousands more were taken into exile, depopulating the province. A key component of the
Turkification process was the policy of massive population resettlement, a result of the
1934 Law on Resettlement, a policy targeting the region of
Dersim as one of its first test cases with disastrous consequences for the local population.
Massacres The Zilan Massacre refers to the
massacre of thousands of
Kurdish residents in the Zilan Valley of
Turkey by 12/13 July 1930, during the
Ararat rebellion, in which 800–1500 armed men participated. The Zilan Massacre took place in the Zilan or Zeylan valley (Kurdish:
Geliyê Zîlan, Turkish:
Zilan Deresi,
Zeylân Deresi) located to the north of the town of
Erciş in
Van Province. The massacre took place in July 1930, before the
Third Ararat Operation (Turkish:
Üçüncü Ağrı Harekâtı, September 7–14, 1930), which was a military operation of the Turkish
IX Corps under the command of
Ferik (
Lieutenant General)
Salih (Omurtak) against
Mount Ararat. The number of people killed in the massacre varies according to different sources. According to the daily newspaper
Cumhuriyet (July 16, 1930), about 15,000 people died. The account of
Hesen Hîşyar Serdî (1907 – September 14, 1985), a writer and participant in the Ararat rebellion, states that 47,000 villagers from 18 villages of Ademan, Sipkan, Zilan and Hesenan tribes were killed. Armenian researcher
Garo Sasuni states that 5,000 women, children and the elderly were massacred. Finally, according to
Berliner Tageblatt, the
Turks in the area of Zilan destroyed 220 villages and massacred 4,500 women and the elderly. The Dersim Massacre took place in 1937 and 1938 in Dersim, now called
Tunceli Province, in
Turkey. It was the outcome of a
Turkish military campaign against the
Dersim Rebellion by local ethnic minority groups against Turkey's Resettlement Law of 1934. Thousands of
Alevi Kurds and
Zazas died and many others were internally displaced due to the conflict.
Foreign policies Atatürk's foreign policy was aligned with his motto, "peace at home and peace in the world." a perception of peace linked to his project of civilization and modernization.{{cite web Turkey was admitted to the
League of Nations in July 1932. ==1938–1950: İnönü (National Chief)==