Book Description

MERHABA, KONNICHIWA.. This book is about two of the most inspiring leaders of all time, Atatürk and Emperor Meiji of Japan, and the destinies of the countries they changed, Turkey and Japan. Atatürk was the founding father of the new Republic of Turkey after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and Meiji was the 122nd Emperor of Japan who established a new system of government in Japan following the departure of the last shogun. Atatürk (1881-1938) and Meiji (1852-1912) were mirror images of one another. They both were revolutionary reformists, determined to unleash their countries from their feudal pasts into modernity. The identical reforms of Atatürk in Turkey in the 1920s and the 1930s, and Meiji’s reforms in Japan in the late 1800s were intended to rip their countries out of the darkness of the Middle Ages. They both foresaw their nations’ advancement only through full adaptation of Western values and institutions, which was an extremely difficult task, considering the impossible ordeal of convincing the predominantly unsophisticated and regressive Muslim and Shinto societies. They changed their peoples’ obstinate cultural habits and institutions of thousands of years. Having an unyielding commitment to secularism, they identified secularism to be the only path to modernization. * All these and many other similar accomplishments were truly extraordinary because of their very identical nature; however, as I discovered during my research the eerie similar past lives, life experiences and personal resemblances of Atatürk and Meiji in opposite corners of the world, I felt that the writing of this book became more of a mission for me than just writing a history book. The core of this book however, explores two issues: the first is the reason why Turkey and Japan occupy two starkly contrasting places on the world stage today, despite the fact that Atatürk and Meiji had enacted nearly identical reforms in their respective countries; the second is the nature of the current and ongoing conflict between two different factions in Turkey – the political Islamists and the Western-minded secularists, the followers of Atatürk. Equally importantly, I will also talk about the Turkish and Japanese cultures and the curiously intertwined histories of Turkey and Japan, which go back 747 years, dating back to the invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281 by Kublai Khan’s Mongolian armies, which, by the way, were mostly made up of Christian Turks. As I mentioned at the top, although the essence of this book is to make comparisons between the contrasting end results of identical reforms of Atatürk in Turkey in the 1920s and the 1930s, and Meiji’s reforms in Japan in the late 1800s, the end result of that contrast between Japan and Turkey actually emerges before us as one foregone conclusion: Turkey, since Atatürk’s death in 1938, did not follow his footsteps, unlike Japan after Meiji. So, what did happen? Why did Turkey and Japan with the very identical reforms of Atatürk and Meiji end up in two contrasting places in the spectrum of advanced development today? What was the culprit? My arguments in this book will point in the direction of the political Islamists and their manipulative usage of Islam since Atatürk’s death, most specifically, in the direction of the cruel war they have waged in recent years against Atatürk’s secular and Western ideals.