What would Ataturk say about the flood in Istanbul?

BY MEHMET BARLAS
SABAH- It was inevitable that a discussion would start on whether Ataturk would be pleased about the prospect of Turkey’s European Union membership. Would there be such discussions in other countries? I don’t know. Maybe some American intellectuals have considered what George Washington would say about the US invasion of Iraq. I wonder if British columnists tried to divine William the Conqueror’s views on Britain’s bid to enter the European Common Market (ECU), but being rejected twice. Turkish Republic founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk died in 1938. World War II hadn’t even begun. Ataturk couldn’t know that one day France and Germany would use the same currency (the euro). The World Trade Center in New York had neither been build nor destroyed the year Ataturk died. Not to mention nuclear bombs, antibiotics, genetic engineering, the Internet, the collapse of the Soviet Union and free trade with China… Mao hadn’t even come to power in China when Ataturk passed away! Then there was a British mandate in Iraq, the father of the overthrown Shah was reigning in Iran, as did Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy, and Chamberlain in Britain. Churchill wasn’t prime minister. The term ‘Iron Curtain’ entered the dictionaries eight years after Ataturk’s death and fell out of use 52 years later.
Feeling gratitude towards Ataturk and trying to understand what Ataturk would think about the problems of today are two different things. One could try to answer the questions of what Ataturk would do and act accordingly, but this has nothing to do with politics or scholarship. Furthermore, since Ataturk was a politician, it is also possible to form different ideas for different situations assuming his views for various conditions.
Would Ataturk have entered NATO?
Would Ataturk enter into a stand-by agreement with the IMF?
What would Ataturk say about the recent flood in Istanbul?
What I want to say is this: Instead of trying to understand Ataturk’s attitude towards the EU, it is better to express our own views about the EU. Not even the UN existed in 1938.