When I was reading the introductory chapter of a recent book on the transnational dimensions of "Kemalism", I recalled a well-known Bektaşi story. This is about a Bektaşi who happened to be in a mosque, listening to the sermon of the imam. The latter was explaining God to the congregation: "He in no way resembles anything you might know. He is not fathered and He did not father. You cannot see Him; He is to be found neither on this earth nor in the heavens. He does not eat, nor does He drink. He does not rest; He does not sleep. He does belong neither to space nor to time. He does not have hands, ears, or a tongue…" Upon hearing all this, the Bektaşi exclaims: "You want to say that He does not exist, hoca, but you do not dare to spit it out". As a matter of fact, the authors were describing so brilliantly how the word "Kemalism" has so far been used in historiography to designate various historical processes or political programmes that have nothing in common, that it seemed as if they were going to deny any cognitive value to the appellation for it has been a platter which can be served with many a different sauce. Unfortunately, they stopped where our Bektaşi spoke up. I believe nevertheless that the rest of this very informative book is composed of excellent articles which analyse how Albanians, Bosnians, Muslim Turks of Bulgaria, etc. perceived what was happening in Turkey in the 1920s and 30s and how they chose to replicate or not the different characteristics of the ongoing Turkish transformation (Clayer, Giomi, Szurek 2019).
2To put it bluntly, I am of the opinion that no such thing as "Kemalism" existed in Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's lifetime. First of all, there has never been, in the 1920s and 30s, an official discourse or a body of texts that can be considered as similar to the respective catechisms that Fascism, Nazism, Stalinism, or Maoism have developed for themselves. It is true that the word Kemalizm or Kamâlizm appeared in Republican People's Party (RPP) publications between the years 1935 and 1939. But it was always On "Post-Kemalism" or How to Stop Worrying about Politics and Love History