TURKEY NEEDS ANOTHER ATATURK NOT ERDOGAN

Something to THINK ABOUT …

With his latest divisive outburst as he seeks re-election, Turkey’s Executive President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, underlined the chasm between him and his great predecessor, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Ataturk was one of the Turkish heroes of the Gallipoli campaign before becoming his nation’s first President in 1923. He showed his wisdom and compassion in 1934 when he addressed visiting Anzac and British veterans and said:

“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 Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours … You the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now living in our bosom and are at peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”

Has there been a more generous sentiment of forgiveness and humanity from a victorious warrior to his foes?

Ataturk’s wonderful gesture of reconciliation opened the way for an uniquely warm relationship with our former enemy. Prior to Erdogan’s authoritarian rhetoric, Turkey made some remarkable overtures to the Anzacs. After all, how often does one nation name part of her beloved land after soldiers from two countries on the other side of the world who came to invade her?

That’s what the Turks did in 1985 when their government officially named the beach where the Anzacs landed on April 25 1915 as Anzac Koyu or Anzac Cove. At the dedication ceremony at Ari Burnu Cemetery at the northern end of Anzac Cove those words from Ataturk were unveiled and immortalised on a beautiful stone memorial.  

That same year the Australian Government reciprocated by naming part of Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra as ‘Ataturk Reach’ and by naming the entrance to Albany Harbour in WA, the departure port for the Anzacs, as ‘Ataturk Entrance’. 

And, at the same time, the New Zealand Government dedicated the Ataturk Memorial on a hill at the entrance to Wellington Harbour, the departure port for the NZ contingent.

As early as 1951, two years after the Australian and Turkish forces fought side by side as allies in the Korean War, they co-celebrated Anzac Day. The Victorian RSL even has a Turkish Sub-branch that marches on Anzac Day.

But, since he came to power in 2014, Erdogan has been working to water down the influence and legacy of the great Ataturk, a noted secularist and social reformer who modernised Turkey, enabling the emancipation of women, abolishing Islamic institutions and introducing western legal codes, dress, calendar and alphabet.

While Ataturk pursued a policy of friendly neutrality with Turkey’s neighbours, Erdogan has whipped up sectarian division and hatred. His latest diatribe, where he showed footage of the Christchurch massacre at one of his local election rallies, while linking the Anzacs’ involvement in the Gallipoli campaign with some kind of religious crusade – Christians trying to invade Muslim Turkey – is consistent with his approach to taking Turkey back to an Islamic state.

Would that we had another Ataturk to lead our Turkish friends with wisdom and compassion.

AUSTRALIA'S OWN COLONEL KURTZ FROM 'APOCALYPSE NOW'

Lt-Col Barry Petersen MC at Hellfire Pass in 2008

Something to THINK ABOUT …

Late last month Australia quietly lost one of its finest warriors, Lt-Colonel Barry Petersen MC, the man whose Vietnam War exploits many believe were the inspiration for the central character in Francis Ford Coppola’s movie ‘Apocalypse Now’, played by Marlon Brando.

Petersen always pointed out that the movie was based on Joseph Conrad’s classic novella, ‘Heart of Darkness’, and it was. 

But many believe Barry Petersen’s remarkable service at least in part inspired the Brando character, Colonel Kurtz, a rogue officer commanding a guerrilla army, who draws his nemesis Captain Willard, played by Martin Sheen, further and further into the heart of darkness, all the time wrestling with growing ethical dilemmas. 

In reality, Barry Petersen’s achievements amongst the tribesmen in the highlands on the border between Vietnam and Cambodia surpassed those of the Kurtz character because Petersen’s operation was spectacularly successful and, unlike Kurtz, he maintained his sanity and his discipline throughout his service.

In 1963, 28-year-old Captain Barry Petersen was a member of the elite Australian Army Training Team, the first of our soldiers committed to the Vietnam War.

He’d already served in the Malayan Emergency and his experience there training Malays in counter guerrilla tactics against the communist insurgents, saw him seconded to the American CIA and running an independent field operation based out of the Darlac Provincial capital of Ban-Me-Thuot, supplied and funded by the CIA.

Within twelve months he’d amassed a guerrilla army of more than 1000 Montagnard tribesmen who caused havoc with their ‘hit and run’ tactics against the Viet Cong (the North Vietnamese Communists) along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Petersen was revered by his Rhade tribal warriors. He learned their language, adopted their customs and native dress and led them in battle. They made him a tribal chieftain and gave him the name Dam Sam, after a legendary Rhade tribal warrior who was undefeated in battle.

Indeed, Petersen and his Montagnard army were so successful that the Viet Cong placed a bounty on his head. Petersen played up their successes, even creating a tiger badge for his troops, who became feared as the ‘Tiger Men’ of Truong Son Force.

The Australian’s success also raised the ire of his CIA handlers who thought he had too much power and set about reigning him in. For their part, the Montagnards hated both the South and North Vietnamese, who had suppressed them for centuries, and they distrusted the motives of the Americans. In late 1964, they threatened to revolt against the South Vietnamese.

Petersen intervened and convinced his Tiger Men to stay out of the fight. It was an extremely dangerous task and he was later awarded the Military Cross for his bravery in the action.

But that was the final straw for the CIA and Petersen’s handlers warned him that if he didn’t leave the highlands of his own volition, he’d have an accident and leave in a body bag. 

It took orders from his Australian commander before Petersen left his Tiger Men army, after an elaborate tribal farewell ceremony that confirmed the suspicions of some of his colleagues that he had ‘gone native’.

Barry Petersen served another tour in Vietnam as a major with an Australian unit but he knew his future promotion path was limited and he retired from the army as a Lt-Colonel. 

He settled in Bangkok and worked to help Montagnards who fled Vietnam and set up a consultancy business which strengthened his reputation as an ‘international man of mystery’, with deep connections with the region’s many spooks 

In 2002 I interviewed Barry Petersen for my book, ‘The Spirit of the Digger’, and found him a humble man who was intensely proud of his service and of that of his Montagnard comrades.

Former Governor-General and commander of the SAS, Major-General Mike Jeffery, said: “Barry Petersen was one of the very best of the Australian military profession because he took on such and difficult and unique task.”

Petersen’s Montagnard regalia rests in the Australian War Memorial.

Vale Barry Petersen MC