Morrison invokes Ataturk’s peace vow to Diggers

Scott Morrison has invoked the spirit of reconciliation of Turkey’s first president and modern-day founder, Mustafa Kemal.

Turkey’s modern-day founder and first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Scott Morrison has invoked the spirit of reconciliation embodied by Turkey’s first president and modern-day founder, Mustafa Kemal — known as Ataturk — who, as leader, advanced Turkey as a secular state and repaired ­relations with Australia following the end of World War I.

The Prime Minister’s decision to invoke the legacy of Ataturk will be viewed as provocative by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has sought to give greater expression to Turkey’s Islamic character and stage a retreat from the secular vision promoted by the republic’s founding leader.

Mr Morrison yesterday said he was “deeply offended” by Mr Erdo­gan’s incendiary remarks that “anti-Muslim” Australians who visited Turkey would be returned home in coffins “like their grandfathers did” in the Gallipoli campaign.

Kemal was at Gallipoli the morning the Anzacs landed, commanding the 19th Turkish Division. When Turkey became a republic in 1923, he was elected its first president — a position he held until his death in 1938 from cirrhosis of the liver.

“I was just deeply offended, as any Australian would be,” Mr Morrison said. “The first thing that came to my mind was the promise of Ataturk. I mean, Ataturk sought to transform his country into a modern nation, an embracing nation, and I think these comments (from Mr Erdogan) are at odds with that spirit and the promise that was made to Australians, that we have relied upon, I think, to build the good ­relationship that we have.”

A moving tribute to the Anzacs has been famously attributed to Ataturk, who empathised with the mothers of Australians and New Zealanders killed in the Gallipoli campaign. The words are inscribed on prominent memorials in Gallipoli and Canberra.

“Those heroes that 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 the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours,” it reads. “You, the mothers who sent sons from faraway coun­tries, wipe away your tears; your sons are lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well”.