Pahlavi, Atatürk, and How to Follow a Role Model

Reza Schah Pahlavi tried to put through similar reforms in Iran as Atatürk did in Turkey.
Somehow, he was not as successful.

Is it because Iran was by far poorer and less self-confident?
Or was he just not popular enough a personality?
Or were the humiliations during and after WWII (occupation, transit rights, loss in the quarrel for oil rights) the only trigger which made the reforms futile?

 
Pahlavi vs Ataturk

The biggest advantage to Turkish development was that Ataturk had a lot of partisans of all walks of life in the Turkish Army that were completely on board with the idea of modernization and had the room to enact his program for generations, seen as an organic Turkish movement nearly everyone bought into. If not, they disappeared or were just ignored.
Pahlavi had been installed by a CIA-orchestrated military coup against a popular, elected prime minister, so he was considered a tool of Western interests pretty much from the git-go. Plenty of people benefited from Pahlavi's reforms, but never saw the gains as worth compromising Iranian identity/culture to a corrupt autocrat, no matter how much PR he put out.
Keep in mind something else- there was a tremendous number of Iranian exchange students that studied in Western countries in the 1960's and 70's, saw the gross disparities in goodies available as well as political systems vis-a-vis Iran and wanted reform yesterday.
Ataturk wasn't under quite the social pressures of a brand-new bourgeoisie demanding democracy and so forth as stridently as the Iranian technocrats manning the barricades with the bazaaris and overtly religious in 1979 demanding an Islamic Republic with a human face. Of course, SAVAK created that coalition by oppressing everyone equally savagely and lost control when they lost their nerve.
That answer your question?
 
Ataturk was the beneficiary of there having already been 100 years of rather radical reform behind him, and most segments of society were on board and had been for generations.

But whether or not he succeeded, or his agenda was the right one, remains to be seen. It's not looking so good on either count at the moment.
 
Ataturk had pretty much saved the Turkish nation during WW1 and the War of Independence. I suppose he had a lot of political capital to spend.
 

Cook

Banned
“I am not ordering you to fight, I am ordering you to die.”
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
25 April 1915.

There aren’t too many commanders around that can give an order like that and actually be obeyed.


“Those heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives,
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
Therefore rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies
and Mehmets to us where they lay side by side
here in this country of ours.
You, the mothers,
who sent their sons from far away countries
wipe away your tears;
your sons are now lying in our bosom
and are in peace.
After having lost their lives on this land they have
become our sons as well.”
- Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
1934.

And that is possibly the most magnanimous statement anyone has ever uttered.

 

Keenir

Banned
Ataturk had pretty much saved the Turkish nation during WW1 and the War of Independence. I suppose he had a lot of political capital to spend.

very true.

and surviving a bomb being hurled at him, that didn't hurt either. (a bullet or shrapnel, I think)
 
What I wanted to find out:
Had the Shah regime already failed in turning the country around in 1940,
or only in 1945?

My impression was that from 1940 (say) it could have gone almost as well as with Turkey.
But I am not sure.
 
Ataturk was the beneficiary of there having already been 100 years of rather radical reform behind him, and most segments of society were on board and had been for generations.

But whether or not he succeeded, or his agenda was the right one, remains to be seen. It's not looking so good on either count at the moment.

Hrmm. I read a few days ago that people are less optimistic about the AKP than they were even in 2007; are you less happy with them?
 
Hrmm. I read a few days ago that people are less optimistic about the AKP than they were even in 2007; are you less happy with them?

I'm not all that happy with them to begin with. But the long economic downturn is weighing on them, as is their already-long tenure in office. Power corrupts and all that. But culturally, Turkey is beginning to move past the bleakness of Kemalism and get back to its roots, which is a happy development, and part of that is due to the AKP throwing off some of the hard-line restrictions on culture.
 
Kemal's reforms are being suborned by fundamental religious groups, but those are maybe influenced by events in Iraq and Iran. The value of the reforms was that Turkey was freed from the 'God-King' complex, which has been a foe of freedom in every country. The English Civil War got rid of the 'God-King' in England and Scotland, as the Revolution did in France. Iran still has to rid itself of 'God-Kings'; let us hope that in the process there are proportionately fewer casualties than occurred in China and Russia.

Perhaps the most interesting modernisation in the post-war era has been in Spain, where the King - installed by absolutist Franco - has the distinction of having saved a socialist government by refusing to become a dictator. That shows the advantages of constitutional monarchy over either the 'God-King' system or the republic.
 
I'm afraid the Pahlavis weren't actually that similar to Ataturk. Ataturk really was interested in the future of his country and did a decent job in setting at least quasi-democratic institutions. The Pahlevis, meanwhile, have mostly been noted for what their infamous secret police, Savak, was doing to its people, even more so than Turkish torture.

Maybe most important is that Turkey's constitution had democracy and checks and balances, even if they were weak until just this decade. History's always been hard on those ruled by unchecked dictators or kings. And reform's easier that way in the long term because you get a virtuous circle of improvement between the branches.
 

Keenir

Banned
Kemal's reforms are being suborned by fundamental religious groups, but those are maybe influenced by events in Iraq and Iran. The value of the reforms was that Turkey was freed from the 'God-King' complex, which has been a foe of freedom in every country. The English Civil War got rid of the 'God-King' in England and Scotland, as the Revolution did in France. Iran still has to rid itself of 'God-Kings'; let us hope that in the process there are proportionately fewer casualties than occurred in China and Russia.

Turkey got rid of the God-King back in the 1400s.

there's always been checks on the power of the Sublime Porte - sometimes it was even janissaries.
 
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