The Passing of the Hat Law

In the previous article we followed İskilipli Mehmed Atıf Hoca ﵀ through the years of the occupation, when the scholars of İstanbul joined together in the Cemiyet-i Müderrisîn and later in the Teâlî-i İslâm Cemiyeti to advance the cause of Islam at a time when the capital lay beneath foreign arms and the future of the caliphate was uncertain, and we saw how Atıf ﵀ took a leading place within that company and thereby became entangled in a growing tension with the national movement that resisted the occupation from Ankara and that saw all too readily in these scholars of the occupied capital its opponents. That tension, however painful, belonged to an era that was now drawing to a close, for the national struggle had been crowned with victory, the occupier had been driven from Anatolian soil, and the men of Ankara stood on the point of recasting the empire they had saved upon an entirely new foundation. What they had in view was not the restoration of the old order for which Atıf ﵀ had striven his whole life, but the establishment of a new state that would break with that old order in its very foundations, and it is in the years of that upheaval that the fatal thread began to be spun which would lead the scholar to the gallows.

The Birth of the Republic

The victory of the national movement under Mustafa Kemal had driven out the occupier and secured the existence of a Turkish state, but in doing so it had left open the question of what form that state would take and on what principles it would rest, and the answer that the leaders in Ankara gave in the years after the victory turned out more radical than most of their contemporaries had foreseen. Already in November 1922 the sultanate had been abolished and the last Ottoman sultan had fled the capital, so that the centuries-old bond between temporal power and the house of Osman had been severed, yet for the time being the dignity of the caliphate still endured, transferred to another member of the dynasty who would henceforth be caliph without temporal power, a shadow of the old office that sustained the appearance of the old order for a while longer.

On 29 October 1923 came the decision that put an end to that transitional state, for on that day the Grand National Assembly in Ankara proclaimed the Republic, with Mustafa Kemal as its first president, and with this not merely a new form of government was announced but a rupture was sealed with everything the empire had been in its constitutional essence. The sovereignty that for centuries had belonged to the sultan-caliph as the deputy of a higher order was henceforth conferred without reservation upon the nation and its elected assembly, and the principle that the state derived its justification from religion and from the caliphate was replaced by the principle of popular sovereignty on the European republican model. For the Muslims of Anatolia the proclamation of the Republic was not merely a political event but the announcement of an upheaval that would reach into the very heart of their religious life, even though many of them at that moment did not yet grasp how deeply that upheaval would cut.

Atıf ﵀ belonged to those who did discern early the true tendency of what was unfolding, for he was a scholar who knew the history of reform from within and who understood that the forces that had been at work in the empire since the Tanzimat were now, in the form of the Republic, taking their most radical turn. He had lived the decline of the old empire in his own fate, and he regarded the new state not with the enthusiasm of one who saw in it deliverance, but with the concern of one who feared that the Muslim community, after the outward defeats it had suffered, now had also to expect from its own government an assault upon its spiritual foundations.

The Abolition of the Caliphate

That concern proved not unfounded, for barely four months after the proclamation of the Republic came the decision that in the eyes of the believing Muslim world weighed heaviest of all. On 3 March 1924 the Grand National Assembly abolished the caliphate, expelled the last caliph and the entire Ottoman dynasty from the country, and thereby put an end to an office that since the death of the Prophet ﷺ had, in one form or another, embodied the unity of the Sunni Muslim world. The caliphate had been bound to the house of Osman since the sixteenth century, and although in its final years it had been reduced to a powerless dignity, it remained for the Muslims of Anatolia and beyond the visible sign that the community of believers, however divided and weakened, still possessed a spiritual center. Its abolition was therefore no administrative measure but an act of symbolic significance that concerned the whole world of the believers, and it was experienced by many, within and outside Turkey, as a bewildering blow.

On the same day, and in the laws that immediately followed it, the institutions upon which the religious life of the empire had rested for centuries were dismantled. The office of the Şeyhülislâm, the highest religious authority of the old empire that had watched over the lawfulness of the state’s acts, was abolished, the administration of religious affairs and pious foundations was brought under the new state order, and above all the system of the medreses, the schools of learning that since early Ottoman times had produced the scholars of the empire, was closed by law and subjected to a uniform, state-controlled educational system fashioned on the Western model. For Atıf ﵀, who had devoted his entire life to the medrese, first as a student in İskilip and at the Fatih complex, then as a müderris and as an inspector of religious education, the closure of the medreses was not merely the disappearance of an institution but the erasure of the world in which he belonged, the demolition of the chain of learning that reached back to the Companions ﵃ of the Prophet ﷺ and that he had set himself the task of passing on undamaged.

The Westernizing Upheaval

The abolition of the caliphate and the closure of the medreses were not isolated measures, but the first and the heaviest of a whole series of reforms with which the new leadership set out to detach Turkish society, within a relatively short span of time, from its Islamic and Ottoman inheritance and to reshape it after the model of contemporary Europe. What had begun in the Tanzimat as a hesitant and partial modernization, and what the Committee of Union and Progress had carried on with greater vigor, was now driven by the Republic to its utmost consequence, for whereas the reformers of the nineteenth century had still sought to place the new beside the old, the new state aimed to replace the old with the new and to make the visible signs of the inherited order vanish from public life.

In the years that followed the proclamation of the Republic, one part after another of the old life was taken in hand, for education was wholly brought under the state and stripped of every religious content, the religious courts were abolished in favor of a legal code adopted from Europe, and throughout administrative and social life the separation between state and religion was carried through, religion being henceforth pushed back into the enclosed domain of the private conscience. It was an upheaval that in its completeness and in its pace had no equal in the Muslim world, and it set the believing scholars of the country before a question of the deepest weight, namely whether they would look on in silence as the visible order of Islam was driven out of public life, or whether it was their duty, as heirs of prophetic knowledge, to warn the community of what threatened to befall it spiritually.

The Position of a Scholar Under the New Order

For a man like Atıf ﵀ that question was not of a merely theoretical kind, for he belonged to the scholars whose entire reason for being was undermined by the new measures, and he stood before the choice between renouncing his calling and persevering in it under a regime that would grant that calling no place any longer. He chose, as he had chosen all his life, for perseverance, not in the form of political resistance or conspiracy, for he was not the man for that and every inclination toward it was lacking in him, but in the form that was proper to him as a scholar, that of the written word, of reasoning, and of appeal to the sources of the faith. He remained what he had always been, a scholar who did not bend his judgment to the demands of power, and he held that precisely in this hour of upheaval it was his duty to instruct the community about the spiritual consequences of what was being carried out under the name of progress.

It is important to see that in these years Atıf ﵀ waged no open war against the new state and did not range himself in the camp of the political opposition, for his objections concerned not the form of government as such but the spiritual direction in which society was being driven, and his instrument was not the pamphlet of revolt but the treatise of the scholar. That very circumstance makes the fate that awaited him all the more grievous, for the man who would later be tried and put to death as a conspirator dangerous to the state had done nothing other than follow his pen where his conscience directed him, in the conviction that warning the believers of a spiritual danger belonged to the first duties of the scholar.

The Book on the Imitation of the Europeans

In the year 1924, while the upheaval was in full course and the institutions of the old order were being demolished one after another, Atıf ﵀ published a book that would take a decisive place in the history of his life, a treatise with the title Frenk Mukallidliği ve Şapka, which may be rendered as the imitation of the Europeans and the hat. The book appeared by the established and entirely lawful path, for it was printed with a license from the ministry of education, the authority that in the new state had been charged with the oversight of publications, and no one at the moment of its appearance forbade its sale or its distribution, so that it came before the readers without any secrecy and with the consent of the authorities. This circumstance, that the book had been published with government license, is of such weight for the judgment of what happened later that it must here be stated with emphasis, for it deprives the later accusation, that the book had been a forbidden or an underground writing, of every ground.

The thesis of the book was, at its core, a religious and cultural one and not a political one. Atıf ﵀ argued that the adoption of the outward signs of the European way of life, and in particular of European dress of which the hat had become the emblem, was not the innocent change of a custom that people tried to make of it, but a case of what Islamic scholarship denotes with the term teşebbüh, the imitation of the non-Muslims in that which is proper to them as a community. That imitation, so he reasoned, was not without consequences, for man expresses in his dress and in his outward appearance to which community he wishes to belong and with which order he identifies himself, and whoever adopts the signs of a foreign civilization in time also takes over something of its spirit and of its values, so that outward imitation prepares the way for an inward estrangement from one’s own religious and cultural foundation. The hat was in his eyes not merely a head covering but a sign, and indeed a sign of the spiritual and cultural absorption of the Muslim into a foreign order, and it was against that absorption that he warned the believers.

The Content and the Tone of the Treatise

Whoever reads the book with attention to what it truly asserts, and not through the lens of the later accusations, perceives a treatise that moves on the terrain of religious law and of spiritual instruction, and that builds its argument out of the current grounds of Islamic scholarship, out of the transmitted sources and out of the reasoning concerning the consequences of imitating the non-Muslims. The book did not call for revolt against the state, it did not incite the population to violence, and it was not directed against the form of government or against the persons who governed it, but it posed a question of conscience to the believer, the question whether it was permitted to him to make his own the outward signs of a foreign civilization and what spiritual price he would ultimately pay for it. It was, in other words, the work of a scholar who exercised his office as he believed it became him, by instructing the community about a matter that in his conviction touched its spiritual welfare.

The tone of the book was that of scholarly reasoning, not that of the polemical tract, and it fits within a long tradition of Islamic treatises on the question of how far the Muslim may adopt the customs of the non-Muslims, a question that had occupied the scholars of the community through all the centuries and that in the time of the great upheaval through which Turkey was passing had acquired a pressing immediacy. That Atıf ﵀ felt himself called at precisely this moment to write about this subject bears witness to his keen awareness that the outward change the new state pursued had an inward tendency that the believer must not overlook, and it is the tragedy of his life that precisely this book, which had been written out of concern for the spiritual welfare of his fellow believers, would become the weapon with which he was led to the gallows.

The Decisive Sequence of Time

Here a fact must be established that of all the facts in this story weighs heaviest and that in the later presentation of matters has been systematically obscured, namely the order in which the events took place. The book Frenk Mukallidliği ve Şapka appeared in 1924, and the law that would make the European hat compulsory, the Şapka Kanunu, was not passed until 25 November 1925, so that about a year and a half elapsed between the publication of the book and the promulgation of the law. This means, and it cannot be repeated often enough, that Atıf ﵀ wrote and published his book at a time when no hat law yet existed, and that it was therefore impossible for him to incite with that book the breaking of a law that at the moment of writing had not yet been issued and whose coming no one could foresee with certainty.

The accusation that would later be brought against him, that with his book he had roused the people to resistance against the hat law, thus founders on the simple and irrefutable order of time, for one cannot incite the breaking of something that does not yet exist, and a writing that appeared a year and a half before a law cannot in honesty be construed as an incitement against that law. Whoever wishes to understand the fate of Atıf ﵀ must keep this sequence always before his eyes, for it unmasks the true character of what befell him, namely not the punishment of a lawbreaker, but the use of a lawfully published writing as a pretext to settle accounts with a disagreeable scholar under the guise of a law that was only later brought into being. The man was not condemned for what he had done when he did it, but for what his words, placed afterward and in a different light, proved suited to serve.

The Hat Law and the Independence Tribunals

The law that was passed on 25 November 1925 made the wearing of the European hat compulsory for the male population and in practice forbade the wearing of the fez and of the other head coverings that were identified with the old order, and it thereby raised a matter that in the eyes of Atıf ﵀ was a question of conscience and of religious custom into an obligation imposed by the state, evasion of which was henceforth an offense against the law. The hat law was in the design of the new leadership not merely a prescription concerning dress, but a touchstone, a visible sign by which one could read off who accepted the new order and who rejected it in his heart, for by adopting the hat the subject professed himself for the Westernizing state, while persistence in the old head covering could be construed as a silent refusal. In this way a piece of cloth was made into a profession of faith, and what had before been a question of personal piety was raised by the law into a test of loyalty to the new regime.

That the new state attached such weight to this seemingly slight matter is evident from the harshness with which it answered resistance to the hat law, and that harshness had its instrument in an institution that the Republic had inherited from the years of the national struggle and that it now called back into being, the İstiklâl Mahkemeleri, the independence tribunals. These tribunals were no ordinary courts of justice that judged according to the fixed forms of law, but extraordinary tribunals invested with far-reaching powers, that proceeded without the guarantees of an ordinary trial, whose verdicts were not subject to appeal and that could pronounce the death penalty and have it carried out at once. They had been created in the war years as an instrument of the utmost emergency, and their reappearance in the years of the reform meant that the new state was prepared to enforce its upheaval, if need be, with the means of the state of exception.

The Wave of Protests Against the Hat

The hat law met in broad layers of the Anatolian population with a deep aversion, for to the ordinary believer the imposed head covering was not merely an unusual attire but the sign of an order that was foreign to him and that he associated with the domination of the non-Muslim, and in the weeks after the passing of the law disturbances and protests broke out in numerous cities of the interior. In the late days of November and the first days of December of the year 1925 it came to open demonstrations and rioting in Sivas, in Kayseri, in Erzurum, in Rize, in Maraş and in Giresun, cities that were spread across the breadth of Anatolia and whose simultaneous unrest showed how deep the dislike of the hat law reached among the population. These were not revolts of scholars or of political leaders, but outbursts of the common people who saw in the imposed hat an insult to their faith and their customs, and who resisted the new obligation with the desperate resistance of those who believe they are being struck in their deepest conviction.

The independence tribunals answered these protests with a mercilessness that was meant to sow terror throughout the land, for they went to the rebellious cities, held their sessions in great haste, and pronounced death sentences that were carried out at the gallows without delay, so that in the cities of the interior the bodies of the hanged were displayed on the squares as a warning to everyone who might take it into his head to resist the new order. The state that had prescribed the hat was not prepared to tolerate any resistance to that prescription, and it made of the punishment of the hat riots a display of power that made its deterrent effect felt far beyond the rebellious cities themselves. It was in this atmosphere of persecution and of gallows, in the winter of 1925, that the name of Atıf ﵀ began to be uttered in the mouths of the powerful.

How the Book Was Forged into a Weapon

The connection that the regime drew between the book of Atıf ﵀ and the hat riots was not the fruit of an honest assessment of the facts but of a political calculation, and it is important to see through how that calculation was made. The independence tribunals, which prosecuted the riots against the hat law, went in search of the sources of the resistance, and in that search they came upon the book Frenk Mukallidliği ve Şapka, which dealt with the imitation of the Europeans and with the hat and which in the preceding years had been distributed among the believers, and they decided to see in that book the spiritual instigation of the protests, as if its author had poisoned the minds that would later turn against the law. That the book had appeared a year and a half before the law and that it had been published with government license was of no consequence in this reasoning, for the regime sought not truth but a culprit, and it had found, in the authoritative scholar who had spoken out against Westernization, a culprit to its liking.

Thus a lawfully published treatise of religious scholarship, which had been written out of concern for the spiritual welfare of the believers, was afterward recast into an inciting writing that was supposed to have roused the people to riot, and the man who had done nothing other than proclaim his judgment as a scholar was caught in the net of the hat persecution as if he had been the instigator of the disturbances. It was the same logic that had struck him in 1913 under the Committee, when he had been sent into exile on a suspicion, but it now took a far deadlier turn, for whereas the Committee had merely removed him from the capital, the Republic had at its disposal the extraordinary tribunals that had the power to decide over life and death, and it was prepared to use that power.

The Scholar Against the Logic of Necessity of the State

In the collision between Atıf ﵀ and the new state two irreconcilable conceptions of law and of truth stood opposed to one another, and it is in that light that his approaching ruin must be understood. For the scholar truth was a matter of the sources, of reasoning and of proof, and he held, with the innocence of one who knows the law on his side, that the simple facts, the lawful publication of his book and the order of time that placed the book before the law, would clear him of every accusation of incitement. For the new state, by contrast, truth was subordinate to the necessity of the upheaval, and the independence tribunals had not been established to weigh the facts but to push through the will of the regime, so that the scholar who trusted in the facts and in the law in reality stood opposed to a power that did not seek the facts and did not respect the law.

Therein lies the deepest tragedy of what took place in these months, for Atıf ﵀ went to meet his ordeal with the weapons of the scholar, with reasoning and the appeal to truth, while his opponents were not to be reached along that path, because it was not truth they were after but deterrence and the establishment of the new order by means of terror. The man who believed that his innocence would save him, because by the measure of the law it was undeniable, had not foreseen, or had not wished to believe, that he would fall into the hands of a tribunal that did not ask after that measure, and it is that fatal failure of understanding between the sense of justice of the scholar and the logic of necessity of the state that would determine the course of his trial and its outcome.

What Was Gathering Around Him

As the year 1925 drew to a close, all the forces that would destroy him had gathered around İskilipli Mehmed Atıf Hoca ﵀, and although at the moment itself he perhaps did not yet grasp it in its full extent, his fate had in a certain sense already been sealed on the day the regime resolved to see in his book the instigation of the hat riots. The Republic had been established and the caliphate abolished, the medreses in which he had been formed and which he had served were closed, the Westernizing upheaval was in full course, the hat law had raised a piece of cloth into a touchstone of loyalty, the protests against that law had thrown the land into turmoil, and the independence tribunals stood ready to settle accounts with the resistance, so that in that combination of forces the authoritative scholar who had directed his pen against the imitation of the Europeans had become the chosen victim.

It is, seen in retrospect, a cruel irony that the man whose whole objection to the new order had been of a spiritual and cultural nature and who had never set foot on the path of political resistance, would fall, precisely through the connection that the regime drew between his book and the hat riots, into the grip of the heaviest political persecution, and that his lawfully published treatise, which had seen the light a year and a half before the hat law, would be held up to him as the proof of a crime he had not committed and could not have committed. The scholar who had learned in the medrese that the knowledge of religion is an entrusted pledge that one ought to pass on undamaged, and who had already in 1913 tasted the flavor of injustice, stood once more, and now under a still harder star, before the choice between denying his conviction and bearing the consequences of his steadfastness.

In the first days of December 1925, when the gallows in the rebellious cities of the interior were still doing their deterrent work and the name of Atıf ﵀ had surfaced in the documents of the independence tribunals, the moment approached when the hand of the state would reach out toward him, and the scholar who had devoted his whole life to the transmitted knowledge of Islam would be taken into custody to be brought before the extraordinary tribunals that would decide over his life. How that arrest in the December days of 1925 came about, along which paths he was led from one tribunal to another, and how in the months that followed he preserved his steadfastness, is the subject of the following article.

Sources

• TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, entry “İskilipli Mehmed Âtıf Efendi”, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı (İstanbul, 2000), pp. 132–135 [the most authoritative academic biography; for the publication of the book in 1924 with an education license and for the course of events surrounding the hat law].
• Ethem Erkoç, İskilipli Mehmed Âtıf Hoca, Çorum Belediyesi (Çorum, 2016) [monograph with the discussion of Frenk Mukallidliği ve Şapka and the chronology of book and law].
• Erik Jan Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, I.B. Tauris (4th edition, 2017), pp. 166–199 [for the proclamation of the Republic, the abolition of the caliphate, the Westernizing reforms and the independence tribunals].
• Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Oxford University Press (3rd edition, 2002), pp. 256–293 [for the hat law and the cultural reforms of the 1920s].
• Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, McGill University Press (1964), pp. 461–479 [for the abolition of the caliphate, secularization and the Şapka Kanunu].
• Hakkı Uyar et al., on the İstiklâl Mahkemeleri and the prosecution of the hat riots of 1925, in the Turkish historiography of the early Republic [for the working of the extraordinary tribunals].