WI Kemal Ataturk had made turkey a constitutional monarchy?

Hello everyone, as we know there is a coup happening in Turkey right now (don't worry admins, this thread is not about that), and I did some (fast) research and it seems that Turkey had 3 coups in the last 50 years. Because of that I reminded of the monarchist argument that coups are less common in monarchies, because the King can rally the population against the coup (like the 23-f in spain)

because of that I got a doubt: What if Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, instead of overthrowing the ottoman empire, had instead forced the sultan to accept a constitutional monarchy with a secular state, and thus keeping turkey with their modern (1922) borders but also with the house of Osman in charge?
 

Devvy

Donor
Separation of church and state doesn't need to be complete. Look at the UK; the Queen is still the head of the Church of England.

If the Sultan can accept being the head of church and state, but handing off day-to-day duties for both to others, then no issue.
 
Separation of church and state doesn't need to be complete. Look at the UK; the Queen is still the head of the Church of England.

If the Sultan can accept being the head of church and state, but handing off day-to-day duties for both to others, then no issue.

Nice, nice, so they accept this and keep the sultan as a caliph, what happens after that?
 
1) Ataturk was violently enforcing the distinction between the modern Turkish state and the old Ottoman empire. Language, alphabet, capital, etc. No way would he have accepted an Ottoman prince as king.
2) For the same reason, any ruler is NOT going to be 'caliph', as that is an islam-wide title.
3) republics were the 'in' thing at that point, especially for modernists. The only new state in Europe that established a monarchy after WWI was Hungary - and THAT was an empty chair (a Regency for nobody in particular, iirc). True, several Arab nations invented their own monarchies - but those were mostly (?all?) under British administration. And e.g. Idris in Egypt and the Saudis in Saudi Arabia were NOT the kind of examples Ataturk was trying to emulate. (Admittedly the Hashemites in Jordan were decent.)
4) picking someone else means he has to share power.
4a) The British monarchy has little power, true, but has a long history. A brand-new monarchy created from scratch would have to EARN that respect to be useful.
4b) if he picked himself, it probably doesn't add to his power (it's just a change in title), and might lessen it because his kids are not going to have the same competence or respect that he did.
 
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