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The Eternal Lives of the Dead: A Comparative Study
of the Images of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (Turkey)
and King Chulalongkorn (Siam)
Thanavi Chotpradit
S0600105
Supervisor
Prof. Dr. C.J.M. Zijlmans
Department of Art History
Universiteit Leiden
Thesis Research Master: Western and Asian Art
Histories in Comparative Perspective
Specialization: History and Theory of Modern and
Contemporary Art
January 2009
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 Making the Absence Presence: The Change of the Pictorial
Tradition in Turkey and Siam
- Prohibiting Realistic Living Images: The Pictorial Tradition in the Ottoman
Empire and Siam
- The Beginning of Realistic Representation in the Republic of Turkey and Siam
- Turkey
- Siam
- Conclusion
Chapter 2 Political Aspects of the Adoption of the Realistic Art Discourse and
Nationalism in the Figures of the National Fathers: Images of Atatürk
And King Chulalongkorn in the Early Modern Period
- Defining Turkey: Atatürk‘s Statues and Monuments in the Early Republican
Period
- Atatürk as the Father of the New Nation: The Victory Monument (Ankara)
- Atatürk as the Guide of the Turks: Monument to a Secure, Confident Future
(Ankara)
- The Siamese and their King: Nationalism in the Equestrian Statute of King
Chulalongkorn
- Conclusion
Chapter 3 The Return of the Monarchy: Images and King Chulalongkorn Cult
- The Return of the Monarchy
- King Chulalongkorn Cult and the Neo-Royalism
- The Two Great Kings: King Chulalongkorn‘s image and the Empowering of
King Bhumibol
- Worshipping King Chulalongkorn‘s images: Irony, or a Form of local
Modernity?
Chapter 4 The Revival of the Dead: Images of Atatürk in Turkey‘s
Contemporary Politics
- Atatürk of the Atatürkists
- Atatürk of the Islamists
- The Superstition and the Images of Atatürk
Conclusion
Biography
Source of Illustration
Introduction
‗In the cult of the remembrance of dead or absent loved ones, the cult value of the
image finds its last refuge.‘
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its technological
Reproducibility: Third Version (2003, p. 258)
An image is a prolongation of the presence of the people who have passed away.
When images are set among us, the dead are kept among the living and the inert become
lively—to such an extent that we may even be afraid of it. They serve as an artificial body of
those who no longer have the real bodies, then, make an absence visible and engages in the
ritual of remembrance. In 2007, I first visited Turkey and was so fascinated by the images of
the founder of the republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. I saw his images in various forms
ranging from the state‘s campaign and statues in the public sphere to the pictures in the
private houses. That phenomenon reminded me very much of my native country Thailand, a
place where one would find the images of one of the kings, Chulalongkorn, in a very similar
manner.
There is another image cult—that is the cult of King Bhumibol—which is now so
much stronger than that of King Chulalongkorn. However, I chose the King Chulalongkorn
cult as a subject of this comparative study on the present day cult image for two reasons.
Firstly, as King Chulalongkorn is no longer living, he is comparable to Atatürk; their cults
suggest superstition beliefs, a matter of the ―primitive,‖ pre-scientific-westernized
consciousness. Secondly, as the adoption of the modernist discourses in Thailand took place
in the reign of Chulalongkorn as well as in that of Atatürk, it is the best starting point to
explore how the modernist discourse in the Non-West appears to be discursive. The cult of
King Chulalongkorn is the phenomenon that proves the existence of the tradition in the
modern(ized) society.
From this, the question arises; why are particular deceased political, i.e. national
leaders are re-incarnated, by whom, at what time, for what purposes, and in what forms do
they (re)appear? One of the most powerful symbols is the image of a political leader,
especially the ones passed away, as they have served many times and places world wide as
symbols of political orders and/or regimes. Images function as a symbol, as reified, and as an
embodiment of a political ideology of the person who became an image. Moreover, by taking
a form of portraiture, it is a political ideology that is, finally, personified. This is the reason
why we think of communist ideology when seeing Marx‘s or Lenin‘s face. Symbols have
always been used by, and for, or against, the authority; while people in North Korea were
made to venerate the picture of Kim Jong-Il (he is still alive, however), Saddam Hussein‘s
statue in Baghdad was torn down after the fall of his regime in 2003. Idolatry and iconoclasm
are two sides of the same coin. No matter how we treat the images, we are all aware that they
have a seductive power.
What do the politics concerning the dead which turned into political symbols signify?
How do the politicized and symbolized images of the dead function in politics? The first
question concerns the political actions of the deceased leader, when he was alive; what
happened in the past that made him become a political symbol? The second question concerns
the contemporary political situation; what happens in the present that evokes the re-
incarnation and the use of that deceased, as a form of a symbol of the political ideology?
These are the main questions of this thesis that I will answer through an examination of the
visual representation of particular deceased leaders from Thailand and Turkey. This thesis
will be a study of the use of the images of King Chulalongkorn (also known as King Rama V,
r. 1853 – 1910) of Siam (became the Kingdom of Thailand in 1939) and Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk (1881-1938, Turkey) both of whom became a cult, and were worshipped by their
people. Through the presence of their images, King Chulalongkorn and Atatürk are
(re)produced, manipulated, circulated, and consumed within society.
Now that I started posting the socio-political questions in the image production and
distribution, I am, more or less, doing something beyond the territory of art history. To study
the role and the function of the image in the political sphere and the response of the public to
such images in both the history and the present day, requires a wider area of study than that of
the particular genre and framework of art history. I will employ some perspectives from other
disciplines especially that of anthropology, history, and political science. Images in the non-
artistic media will be included in this research as they also serve as a symbolical
communication. The thesis will take both artworks and images from everyday life. The area
of study thus goes beyond the realm of ―high art‖ into everyday objects. There will be a wide
range of forms of image: portraiture, photography, sculpture, monument, and various forms of
commodity.
The two cases share a similarity as being cults created after their death, yet studying
their cults cannot avoid referring to the past when they were alive. Who were these rulers,
what did they do in the history of crisis in their countries? By going into the historical, social
and political situations of that time, we will understand the importance of these leaders in
their own contexts. The role of an anecdote, biography and, perhaps myth (in other words,
imaginative narrative) of the person who becomes an icon, is relevant for the empowerment
of the image of that person. The information from the past serves as a starting point of the
manipulation, the reasons why the chosen dead were revived at a chosen moment.
It is necessary to see them along the line of history, yet it does not mean that their
present identities and meanings are the same as in the past. When focusing on the
contemporary, it is important, too, to look at the past, because, in this way, one will be able to
see the changes of the meaning and the function of images. While there seems to be a
―continuity‖ from the past to the present, when the cult was initiated and sustained, the
symbolic values and meanings of these deceased are indeed disrupted by different groups of
power that reproduced and manipulated them.
What emotions could their images arouse? Love? Fear? Loyalty? Gratitude? This is a
question of the relationship between the image and the mass beholder. To put it another way,
it is to study the public perception and response (an emotional feeling and behavior like fear,
empathy, etc), or what Nathaniel Hawthorne termed as ―the opinion of the crowd.‖1 What are
the ―beliefs‖ that motivate the beholder to specific actions and behaviors concerning a
particular image? What arouses, what I would call, ―national empathy‖? On the other hand,
this view of response indicates the efficacy and the effectiveness of images too. It is not only
the beholder‘s feeling and behavior, but also the efficacy, effectiveness, and vitality of images
themselves. I do agree with David Freedburg, an American art historian who wrote ‗The
Power of Images. Studies in the History and Theory of Response‘ that the study of the
response towards images has to be done by considering together the phenomenon around it in
order to get to know its use and its function. The study on response will associate with the
consideration on the beliefs that motivate the beholder to a specific response.2
However, the dead cannot speak, but they are capable of being interpreted in many
ways. Katherine Verdery points out that the body‘s symbolic effectiveness does not depend
on its standing for one particular thing, but on its ambiguity, multivocality, or polysemy.3
Their images do not have a single meaning; the meaning can be evaluated from many angles.
They are constructed.
This thesis aims to investigate the connection between the particular figures
manipulated and the wider national context of the manipulation of these rulers. To see it this
way, the images will always be capable to appear in multiple forms serving multiple
purposes. Images of the dead as political symbols are changeable and unstable. The fusion of
the image and the real person indicates that imagination merges with reality. At this point, it
comes close to Baudrillard‘s conception of simulacrum: a sign that is capable to have a life of
1 Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1882, The Prophetic Pictures, cited in David Freedberg, The Power of Images.
Studies in the History and Theory of Response, 1989, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press
1989, p. 42.
2 Freedberg. ibid, p. xxii.
3 Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies. Reburial and Postsocialist Change, 1999, New
York: Columbia University Press, p. 28.
its own. According to Baudrillard, the last phase of a sign is the sign that, in his words, ―has
no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum,4‖ the sign that has no
references, but which is the reality, the truth in itself. A representation turns to be a
presentation.
The image as political symbol plays a significant role in unifying the nation. A strong
nationalistic sentiment, to the point as Benedict Anderson stated as the feeling that the nation
is ―to die for,5‖ is evoked by national symbols; the symbol created by integrating the idea of
kinship and the personification of the nation—the national leader—father of the nation; the
ideology of the Thai king and Atatürk (Atam = my ancestor, Türk = the Turks). These great
leaders are both a kinship metaphor (fatherland) and a personification of the nation; the
embodiment of the nation (they are the nation). National ideology thus celebrates its founder,
i.e. leader (in various modes of authority: the king, the founder of the republic, the great
politician, etc.) as both hero and progenitor― that is, as an ancestor.6 By doing that, it
legitimates and empowers both the persons themselves and the person/institution/ideology
that manipulates them: the Neo-Royalist (Thailand) and the secularist (Turkey).
This thesis concerns my other interest in the formation of modernity in the non-Euro-
American culture too. Both King Chulalongkorn and Atatürk are the ―modernizers‖ of their
country. While sharing a desire to make their nations as ―civilized‖ as the European, the two
great leaders are very different in terms of political standpoint as well as the cultures they
were living in. Atatürk demolished the power of the Ottoman dynasty and established the
republic; King Chulalongkorn, on the contrary, centralized Siam politics into the hand of the
Chakri dynasty, which thus made Siamese monarchy rise to absolute power. While Siam is a
Hindu-Buddhist based culture, Turkey has a strong root in Islamic culture since the Ottoman
time, yet they both share a particular similarity regarding the differences in their art
discourses: the convention of not producing images of worshipped persons.
Structure of the thesis
The first chapter is an exploration of how modernity, a product of western discourse,
was localized to serve the desire, demands and conditions of the indigenous people. What
could be an explanation for the Siamese and the Turks for adopting the making of realistic
images? Whose interests did these adoptions serve, and what were these interests? How did
4 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (trans. by Sheila Faria Glaser), 1994, Ann Arber: The
University of Michigan Press, p. 6.
5 See Benedict Anderson, Chapter 8 Patriotism and Racism, p.141-154, in Imagined Communities.
Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Revised Edition), 1991, London. New York: Verso,
1991.
6 See Verdery, p. 41.
western modernist discourse enter certain periods and societies, and in which sense it was
possible to become accepted? And, lastly, how does the result of such adoption appear? I
would like to approach these questions from the viewpoint of political history, of which I
mean the era of an establishment of the nation-states. I will examine how the two leaders, in
relation to the condition of modernizing the country through many political, social and
cultural reforms and the founding of the nation state, made a huge political transformation:
from the Islam hegemony of the Ottoman Sultan to Secularism (Turkey) and from the
Patrician government (in practice)7 to an Absolute Monarchy (Siam). Interestingly, the
discourse on realism is part of the establishment of modernity of Siam and Turkey. Its
presence marks a paradigm shift in the way the people perceive the relation between the
image, the sacred and the reality.
Chapter 2 is a study of the image as a strategy in the establishment of new nation-
state‘s modernization. The modernist discourse established in Siam and Turkey, I will
examine, is both what made these leaders the modernizers, and, what made the paradigm shift
in visual representation: the conception of realism (figurative representation) and portraiture.
Moreover, it played a significant role in the modernization process, in the modern nation state
constitution and in the legitimation and the empowerment of the leaders/modernizers. I will
analyze all these political aspects and the significance of the monuments erected in Turkey
and Siam as the embodiment of the two great leaders themselves, and the national ideologies
they wished for their countries.
I mentioned earlier that the latter generation invented the King Chulalongkorn cult
and the Atatürk cult. Starting in the late 1980s and 1990s, the deceased leaders became a tool
of a battle in the political sphere. The third and the forth chapter will focus on the formation
of King Chulalongkorn cult and of Atatürk cult respectively, together with the forms and the
uses of their images. I believe that the study of the use and the circulation of the cult figure‘s
image, especially that of a dead figure, is best understood as part of a social and historical
process, and as being created and transformed as a result of interactions and encounters
between groups in that society. So I will take into account the national situations and thereby
the occasions that legitimated the conditions for the creation of the cults. In this chapter, their
images serve as a symbol of the political ideologies acting in the political competition: Neo-
Royalism vs. Democracy (Thailand) and Secularism vs. Islamism (Turkey). Moreover, these
―official‖ meanings of the symbols were ramified into deviant versions of meanings that
7 Since Chulalongkorn ascended the throne when he was only fifteen years old, the real power was with the
regent Chuang Bunnag or Suriyawong (Somdet Chaophraya Borommaha Si Suriyawong). The members of
Bunnag family had been very powerful in Siamese court since the reign of Chulalongkorn‘s father, King
Mongkut (King Rama IV, 1851-1868).
nevertheless link to the official ones: King Chulalongkorn as the patron saint of the
middleclass-business people and Atatürk as the protector of Islamic values of the late 1990s
Islamists.
The image is not a representation of the person, but it is perceived as that person. One
should not insult or do anything against Atatürk or his image. It is illegal. In this light, the
Turkey situation is the same as in Thailand where the lèse majesté law still prosecutes.8
Atatürk has now become a cult; the head and the icon of the secular state is paradoxically
god-like. Meanwhile, the status as the avatar of Hindu Gods of Thai kings makes the king
sacred and unreachable. In these chapters, I will focus on the sacred dimension and the divine
status of the images. Image worshipping itself also contradicts to the concept of
rationalization and science that came with modernist discourse. The cults and the use of
images around the cults suggest how modernities outside the West are discursive. It is always
localized and hybridized with the old (= not/pre-modern) beliefs and customs concerning the
visual representation. This chapter concerns the sacralization of the images and the responses
from the people as results of the hybridization of modernity with the pre-existing cultures.
By comparing the two different cultures under some presumed similarities, I do not
intend to make a universal claim that modernity in non-Western cultures simply appears the
same way and that it only differs from that in the West. On the contrary, this thesis attempts
to emphasize that every culture has its own way of assimilating the new-coming discourses.
The difference lies in the forms and meanings that are in details culturally controlled and
coded.
This thesis is based on the question of the following research methodology: how to
study the dynamics of the genealogy of abstract: national and political ideologies of Thailand
and Turkey in a concrete form. How can we study the cult figures and the socio-political
phenomenon around them through their visual representations? In what forms do the local,
multiple modernities would appear? A study of the use of images of deceased political figures
is a study of a construction and thereby instability of the meaning, in this case, of the dead
political figures as an embodiment of political ideologies. I hope that a study of the use of the
images in relation to the cult will first give an alternative perspective in studying politics in
contemporary society by employing art historical methods, and second, it will help exploring
the subject of the establishment of modernity and modernism in non-Euro-American nation-
states as a selective-indigenizing process. The reception of Western modernism is an ongoing
8 Lèse majesté law is the law to protect a crime of violating majesty, an offense against the dignity of a
reigning sovereign or against a state. Although it officially applies only for the present king and the members
of the royal family, offending the previous kings is considered ―in-appropriated,‖ and thereby can cause
controversy.
process of assimilation rather than of imitation. The presence of the image cult as such will
prove that modernism and traditionalism, however intrinsically opposed they seem to be,
nevertheless remains an inseparable pair of concepts when discussing the existence of
modernity in the non-West.
Chapter 1 Making the Absence Presence: The Change of the Pictorial Tradition in
Turkey and Siam
In his ‗Towards an anthropology of image,‘ Hans Belting defines ―image‖ as the
presence of an absence; an image makes an absence visible by transforming it into a new kind
of presence.9 Belting, in this work, focused on the funeral image, the picture of the deceased.
I, nevertheless, do believe that this notion of image can be applied to examine the emergence
of portraiture in the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Siam where portraiture, the picture
of the living noble was previously inexistent. In this sense, through the non-existence of the
portrait, these nobles were figuratively absent, and thus, having an ambiguous identity in the
public consciousness. Nobody really knew how they exactly looked like.
Portraiture did not exist in both the Ottoman Empire and Siam before the contact with
the West. Why and how did portraiture, the realistic representation of a person, enter certain
periods and societies, and in which sense it was possible to become accepted? First, we have
to bear in mind that when ―non-western‖ cultures adopt western modernist discourse, it is an
ongoing process of assimilation, not of imitation.10 From this approach, I will explain the
emergence of portraiture in these two cultures within their own historical circumstances. I
believe that the desire and necessity for adopting western portraiture tradition and practice by
the rulers of these two countries is not simply a superficial, fashionable act of being ―western
or modern‖ (though it is also true that it was a ―fashion‖ among the elite in the case of Siam),
but rather an act that persuaded by its political and historical condition. To put it another way,
the emergence of portraiture in Turkey in the early republican period and in Siam is highly
political; it took place within the politics-related historical circumstances.
In this chapter, I will examine the role of portraiture in the constitution of western
modernist discourses, and in the nation-building during the era of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and
the reign of King Chulalongkorn. As the modernizers and the heads of the states, the two
great leaders employed portraiture as one of the means to centralize the authority into their
hands. Being a part of the modernization process, portraiture put an end to the old,
(superstitious, too, in the case of Siam) beliefs of not producing realistic representation which
is a legacy of the old regimes—the Ottoman Empire and Siam before westernization.11
9 Hans Belting, “Towards an anthropology of image” in Mariët Westermann (ed.) Anthropologies of Art,
2005, Massachusetts: Studley Press, p. 45.
10 In this thesis, I mainly apply the concept of cultural transfer from John Cark. For more detail, see Chapter
3 The Transfer in John Clark, Modern Asian Art, 1998, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, p. 49 - 65.
11 Modernization does exist in the Ottoman Empire too, but in this, I will focus at the Kemalist / Atatürkist
modernization. In the case of Siam, Modernization began in the late of the reign of King Mongkut (King
Rama IV, r. 1851 – 1868) but was fully operated in the reign of his successor, King Chulalongkorn.
Through many political, social and cultural reforms and the foundations of the nation states,
portraiture played a significant role in the political transformation that shifted the Republic of
Turkey from being under the Islam hegemony of the Ottoman Sultan to secularism. It also
visualized Kemalist ideology, in the figure of Atatürk, and placed it in the public space, that is
also the national space. In a different manner, portraiture in Siam was part of a political
strategy that helped the country from being colonized to being a buffer state between the
French and the British colonies. It made the image of King Chulalongkorn the modernized
Asian King, and proved he was an active player among others European heads of the states.
Furthermore, the King‘s portraits functioned in the internal politics as a symbol of the
Absolute Monarchy, and they fired up nationalistic sentiments among the Siamese.
Prohibiting Realistic Living Images: The Pictorial Tradition in the Ottoman Empire and
Siam
First I will lay the ground for the pictorial traditions of the two cultures to examine
how Western art discourse penetrated through and assimilated with the traditional ones. In the
case of the Ottoman Empire, while people, in general, have a fixed attitude towards the
relation between Islam and the representation as the opposition, the presence of Ottoman
Sultan portraits proves such attitude wrong. According to Oleg Graber, a scholar on Islamic
art, the Koran contains no prohibition of a representation. Graber mentions in „The Formation
of Islamic Art‟ the two passages from the Koran which were later interpreted and became the
principle that oppose to an image-making.
In 5.92: ―O Believers, wine and arrow shuffling, idols and divining arrows are and
abomination, some of Satan‘s works; so avoid it; happy so you will prosper.‖ And, in 6.74
Abraham chides his father Azar for taking idols as divinities: ―I see thee and thy people in
manifest error.‖ The words for idols in these two passages are respectively al-ansab and al-
asnam, both of which imply representations, statues or paintings, used for worship. Graber
remarks that the Koranic meaning is initially that of opposing the adoration of physical idols,
and not of rejecting art or representations as such. These two passages were interpreted and
used to oppose images, yet, these passages may lead to another point; not image producing,
but image worshipping— idolatry.12
As it is not an object for worship, the presence of the portraits of the Ottoman Sultans
in the form of a miniature is theologically acceptable. It was indeed very often produced at the
Ottoman court. Starting in the late 15th century, Sultan Mehmed II (1451-1481), the Sunni
Muslim Conqueror of Constantinople (turned Istanbul to be the capital of the Ottoman Empire
12
Oleg Graber, The Formation of Islamic Art, 1973, New Haven [etc.]: Yale University Press, p. 83
in 1453) invited Italian painters such as Gentile Bellini, Mastori Pavli (Maestro Paolo), and
Matteo de Pasti to his court. Sultan Mehmed II also acquired numerous Italian engravings
from the Florentine merchant colony in Constantinople.
Members of the Ottoman court of Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror were amazed by the
realistic portraits of their ruler made by Bellini (Fig. 1). At the same time, the local painters
were also brought to the palace. This condition formulated an intercultural exchange within
the painting studio of the Ottoman court. The most eminent Ottoman court painter of that
period is Sinan Bey. ‗Menâkib-I Hünerverân of ‟Ălt‘, the major source which give the
information about the Ottoman painters, mentions him among the painters of Sultan Mehmed
II period and adds that he was a student of Mastori Pavli.13
The other portrait of the Sultan painted by Sinan Bey is in the palace collection. In
this portrait Mehmed II is shown seated cross-legged. His face is shown in three-quarter
profile. He smells a rose, while with the other hand holding a handkerchief (Fig. 2).
In his study of the figurative images in Islamic art, Michael Barry made an interesting
comparison between the portrait of Sultan Mehmed II made by Gentile Bellini and by Sinan
Bey that, while the two paintings feature the Sultan in a different way, they both constituted
the power of the Sultan as the Islamic ruler.14 The value of Bellini‘s work lies in the likeness
presence of the Sultan, as Giorgio Vasari wrote in the 16th century, in his account of Bellini:
When {the Sultan} saw what Gentile {Bellini} was able to do with paint, he remained
more wonderstruck and awed than ever before; on account of this, the Sultan for his
own part could not imagine anything else except that Gentile had ―some spirit divine‖
behind him. And were it not for the fact that by law such exercises were forbidden,
and that whoever worshipped statues was punished with death, the Sultan would
never have given leave to Gentile to depart, but instead would have honored him
greatly and kept him at work near him.15
According to Barry, the ―spirit divine‖ is what Muslim illuminators of the 15th
century Ottoman court regarded as the principle at play in all figurative painting made
religiously lawful for the service of an Islamic ruler. It is then very obvious that Bellini‘s
painting were justified according to the same awed religious criteria as the works of the
Ottoman illuminators themselves. For Bellini‘s painting, the ―spirit divine‖ is apparently
13
Nurhan Atasoy and Filiz Çağman, Turkish Miniature Painting (trans. by Esin Atil), Publications of the
R.C.D. Cultural Institute, No. 44, 1974, Istanbul: Doğan Kardeş Matbaacılık Sanayii A.Ş. p. 19.
14 Michael Barry, Figurative Art in Medieval Islam and the Riddle of Bihzâd of Herât (1465 – 1535),
2004, Paris: Flammarion, p 42.
15 Barry, p. 41.
associated with the likeness of the Sultan. On the other hand, Sinan Bey, who did not portray
the Sultan in a realistic sense, made a speculative abstraction of the Sultan as the archetype of
God‘s chosen invincible earthly ruler. With his grim archer‘s ring pushed warningly around
his thumb, the Sultan visually manifests upon earth, in the attitude of divine majesty (Jalâl),
the abiding wrath of God (Qahr), and yet, the same sultan purposely sniffs a compensatory
rose, the symbol of the mystery of God‘s creative beauty (Jamâl), and of His divine mercy
(Luft).16 There is no need to make a realistic representation of the Sultan in Sinan Bey‘s
painting, though his face is recognizable, because the importance lies not in the Sultan as
himself, but as a person chosen by the higher power― God.
Whereas the portrait of the Ottoman Sultan appears as a miniature the way I
described above, sculpture, or statues, were absent during the Ottoman period. This requires
us to go back again to the Koran. While painting is technically accepted and widely produced
in the palace, the production of statues, the objects that ―cast a shadow before them‖ was
strictly forbidden. Reproduction of the three-dimensional human figure was virtually out of
the question for an Ottoman artist. Before the foundation of the Turkish Republic, sculpture
was not allowed to go further than mere ornamental forms; bas-reliefs on plaster, wood and
stone, sculptured earthenware, floral motifs used in architecture, ivory, bronze, and copper
work and tombstone inscriptions.
While the representation of the noble exists in the Ottoman Empire in the form of
miniature painting, there was no such representation of Siamese elite before the reign of King
Mongkut (King Rama IV, r. 1851 – 1868), the forth King of the Chakri Dynasty of
Rattanakosin Period,17 known as the western-science admirer. In the following part, I will
describe the development of the image-making of the King in order to investigate the change
and development of the conception of the status of the King reflected in the statues. The
statues before the reign of King Mongkut are the idols, objects made for worship, an idealistic
representation of the King that has no recognizable face.
Due to the superstitious beliefs, portrait-making of a living person was totally
forbidden since people believed that it is harmful for a living person to have such a portrait. It
would shorten their lives. The fusion between images and the model is the cause for the fear
of images. People were aware of the power of images—to the point that they are afraid that
16
Barry, ibid. p. 42.
17 Rattanakosin Period (1782 – present) began in the reign of King Phra Buhhda Yodfa Chulalok the Great
(King Rama I, r. 1782 - 1809) after the fourteen years of the Thonburi Period (1768 - 1782) of King Taksin
the Great (r. 1768 - 1782) who defeated the Burmese invaders that had demolished the Kingdom of
Ayutthaya in 1767. King Taksin the Great was executed by the regent named ‗Chakri,‘ who later became
King Rama I, the founder and the first King of the Chakri Dynasty of the Rattanakosin Period.
images will take the lives of the models.18 Therefore, the image may not, or should not look
like the model. As a result, the portrayal of living persons would mostly be done in the form
of symbolic substitution or idealized representation. They are idealistic rather than realistic.
The production of images of the king was prohibited, because he was considered to be a
divine figure in a human form with whom very few people were granted audience, except
court personnel, high-ranking officers, and members of the upper class.19 The divine status of
the king as such legitimized his authority in royal absolutism as it made him sacred and
unreachable. Only after the end of each reign, his image could be made, but still, it was made
as a symbol. In this way, there appeared two types of symbolic representative figures of the
king; the king‘s figure in the forms of Hindu deities—Siva and Vishnu; and the king‘s figure
in a form of the crowned Buddha images. These sculptures were both cast after the kings had
passed away.
The first type, the image of the king as Hindu Gods, is associated with the concept of
the king as a dual-divine being on earth. The concept of this type of statue can be traced back
to the Ayutthaya period.20 It was an object of worship in the royal oath-taking ceremony
performed by the court officials to swear that they will have loyalty to the monarch.
The second type, the image of the king as the crowned Buddha, came together with
the concept of the king as the venerable noble just like the Buddha, and the new custom of the
ancestor worship invented in the reign of King Nangklao (King Rama III, r. 1824 –1851). By
royal command of King Nangklao, two Buddha images significant to the House of the Chakri
Dynasty were cast in commemoration of King Phra Buddha Yotfa Chulalok the Great (King
Rama I, r. 1782 – 1809) and King Phra Buddha Loetla Napalai (King Rama II, r. 1809 - 1834)
(Fig. 3). They were the objects of praise built to celebrate the Rattanakosin ancestors who had
been elevated to the position of the Buddha. They are the crown Buddha images, adorned in
full royal regalia, created to suggest regal power or to be dedicated to the royalty. These
statues, the symbols of the royal ancestors, are placed at the consecrated center of the capital
city of Bangkok—the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. They are objects of homage for the
general public as well as the symbol of the integration of monarchy and Buddhism.
Both types of statue are significantly made after the death of the persons that are the
models (the kings); in this way, it does not oppose the superstitious belief that prohibits the
production of the representation. Although they have no identifiable faces, they are both the
18
Apinan Poshyananda, Western-style Painting and Sculpture in the Thai Royal Court (Vol. 1), 1993,
Bangkok: Bureau of the Royal Household, p. 339.
19 Poshyananda, ibid. p. 336.
20 The Kingdom of Ayutthaya (1350 – 1767) was invaded by the Burmese troops in 1767.
objects of commemoration for royal-national ancestors, and of worship as a representative of
the divinity.
A new type of statue that conceptualizes the idea of the Buddhist monarch as the
divine protector of the nation was invented in the reign of King Mongkut. The king
commanded Prince Praditthavorakorn to make ‗พระสยามเทวาธราช‘ (Phra Syama Devadhiraj)
(Fig. 4), an integration of the Buddha and the divine monarchical image. The statue appears to
be wearing monarchial attire, carrying a short sword in the right hand while the left hand is
raised to the chest level. Phra Syama Devadhiraj is regarded as one of the most sacred statues
which have provided protection against many disasters in the past for the Siamese. I will
return to this particular statue in the following part concerning the reign of King
Chulalongkorn.
At this point, I would like to remark that, by having realistic images prohibited, both
the Ottoman Turks and the Siamese were, in their different ways, nevertheless aware of the
power of the images. As I mentioned earlier, in Graber‘s view, the Koran opposes the
adoration of physical idols, and that made the Ottoman artists thus unable to make statues (the
objects that ―cast a shadow before them‖). This proves that they realized that an image has a
seductive power, that there is a danger the image could arouse. To put it in a different way,
the Ottoman Turks probably feared that the statue would become an object of idolatry, an
icon that would compete with God as the only divinity. Therefore they banned them at the
first hand. In this sense, the people who know best the power of the image are the ones who
oppose them. To maintain the presence of power, the image, as a representative of the power,
has to be absent.
In a different manner, the Siamese‘ awareness of the power of the images was
grounded in their fear of the likeness present in the portrait. If a portrait is so real, so accurate
that the individual person can be distinguished and recognized in the portrait, that portrait is,
then, the same thing as that person, or at least it contains the identity and the soul of that
person. Hence, the people feared of having a portrait made because they thought it might take
their lives away from them, or someone could harm them using black magic with their
portraits. This is why we cannot find firstly, representative figures of the living, and secondly,
representative figures that had a recognizable face. These images are made idealistically. We
know who is who and his / her status by name and the customary ways of dressing.
The absence of realistic images in the Ottoman Empire and Siam may be concluded
from the fact that it is not due to the incapacity of the artists, but as a result of the perceptions
and attitudes deeply rooted in the religious and the supernatural beliefs. More importantly, it
is not that they did not know the power of images, indeed, they were very aware of it. Their
awareness appeared as fear, or more precisely, phobia that caused ban and prohibition. What
is absent in general explanations, when people speak about the non-existence of realistic
images in non-western culture, is the fact that people of these cultures know that an image not
only represents the person, but also can be treated like a person. They know well the effect
and the potentiality of images. The likeness of an image is seductive for the viewer as much
as it is dangerous for the model; the Ottoman Turks were afraid that the image would become
idolatrized that competes with God, whereas the Siamese thought that the image can kill
them. The absence of realistic representations of the living in the Ottoman Empire and in
Siam, indeed show best how they were aware of the image‘s power and potentiality. Their
response to images and their likeness presence is a result of local beliefs that motivated their
specific actions and behaviors; the fear, that thereby constituted the taboo for realistic-image
making.
The Beginning of Realistic Representation in the Republic of Turkey and Siam
In this part I will examine how the political situation engaged with the cultural
changes including that of the paradigm shift in pictorial discourses and traditions. While in
the case of Turkey, it deals with internal politics; the transformation from the Islamic
Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey; in the case of Siam, international politics, that is,
the expansion of colonialism in Southeast Asia, was a crucial factor. However, the two
countries share a similarity in having the western modernization process as part of the nation-
building of which the pictorial discourse may be seen as part of the progress to modernity; the
rise of a realistic style in portraiture imagery. While the perception about images changed,
what remained (at least during constructing the nation) was a necessity in legitimizing the
leader‘s authority, but the way to constitute the authority and power, shifted from not
producing their images to the other way around. Producing the leader‘s images became a tool
to emphasize and expand his power to society. It functioned as visual propaganda.
Portraiture functions in unifying the nation within a multi-ethnical state under one
ruler; Atatürk as well as the Siamese king are the links that connect everybody from every
ethnical background under the notion of the father-ruler of the nation. In addition, since the
most vigorous representation of the national figures in Asia has been when the state was
going through a crisis, these leaders are the national heroes because they have saved, or
resurrected the countries from foreign antagonists.21 The undistinguishable pair of concepts
that come together within the whole nation-building project are, no matter how strange it may
be, that of (western) modernism and nationalism. Interestingly enough, western modernity
that was intended to be formulated in the Turkish Republic and in Siam, also functioned in
21
Clark, p. 244.
constructing a nationalistic sentiment. The Western notion of art and image helped unifying
the nation in countries like Turkey and Siam.
Interaction with the West created a cause for cultural transfer. Although
modernization, at one point, is a global practice and modernity is initially a Western-invented
discourse, ―modernity‖ does not appear in the same form (at the same time, let alone the same
as that of Western primary). It is indeed localized; thereby hybridized everywhere where
modernizing processes took place (I will return in detail to the form of the local-hybridized
modernity in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4).
Culture, in an anthropological sense, is the system of signs, meaning and world views
of particular groups of human beings.22 As a construct, culture is open to interpretation. This
view criticizes the concept of truth and authenticity of a culture, and thus, proves that the very
nature of culture is that it is contingent.23 Cultural transfer is a process of selection and
assimilation based on the flow and need, constituted at the site where such flow and need take
place.24 This significantly marks the way in which we see the interaction between the sending
and the receiving culture; it indicates that cultural transfer is a selective process and the result
is an intercultural kind of intervention. Those of the receiving culture have their needs and as
a force of selecting what they wish to transfer, assimilate, and transform. A culture is
something which constantly changes; it hinges on complex, unpredictable, and contingent
social processes. As cultural transfer is indeed politically motivated; culture is, then, a
politico-historically construct.
Within this framework, the questions of this part are what could be an explanation for
the Turks and the Siamese for their adoption of making realistic images during their periods
of building the nation? Whose interests did these adoptions serve, and what were the
interests? I would like to approach this question from the viewpoint of political history. The
emergence of realistic representation, especially the three-dimensional ones (sculpture, statue,
and monument) is highly political. Moreover, the portrait itself has a social and cultural
significance. The portraits of the heads of states are, as I will further describe, not only the
representatives of the models but also of the new politico-social ideologies the models
adhered. Political power allocates value authoritatively.
To understand the condition and the needs of a receiving culture, it is necessary to
consider the way in which contact with the West took place and how the relationship went
through. Even though Siam was never colonized, there was a kind of crisis of resisting
22
Joel S. Kahn, Culture, Multiculture, Postculture, 1995, London: Sage, p. x.
23 Penelope Harvey, Hybrids of Modernity: Anthropology, The Nation State and the Universal
Exhibition, 1996, London: Routledge, p. 29 – 30.
24 Clark, p. 49.
colonial predation. While Atatürk is the leader in the War of Liberation against the victorious
powers of the First World War, King Chulalongkorn has been praised as the one who saved
the country from western colonization.
Turkey
I will begin with the formation of the Republic of Turkey as a new nation-state
founded in 1923. This part will discuss how the Turkish republic used portraiture to demolish
the power of the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish Revolution consisted of two successive and
intermingled parts: the War of Independence and the Reforms of Ataturk. Interestingly
enough, Atatürk‘s vision was based on his concept of western civilization, he aimed at
creating a western society; westernist movements prior to his time were geared towards
imitating western societies. The most important reason, I presume, is that, as the Islamic
political system had been dominant for centuries under the Ottoman rulers, the new ruler,
then, aimed at founding a secular nation-state.
Besides an attempt to distinguish the Republic of Turkey from the Ottoman Empire,
the desire to be a part of the civilized world, for its future benefit in a form of political
strength and economic future, has motivated the Kemalist government to try whatever ways
to make the country ―modern, ‖ in the sense of being democratic, secular, and unitary. The
Turkish concept of secularism is the modernization that was first operated by Kemalism of
which religion was seen as a hindrance to progress in the modernization of state and society.
The ―six arrows,‖ the principles that were formulated by Atatürk‘s Republican Party in 1931
consists of republicanism, nationalism, populism, étatisme (a state control of the commanding
heights of the economy), secularism, and revolutionism or reformism.25
Kemalism is, from one of the principles in the ―six arrows,‖ considered as an anti-
religious (Islam) ideology. It meant the separation of religion from legal, educational and
cultural life. Kemalist modernization thus means secularization. Almost all the important
reforms were based on this principle, including that related to art, to visual representation.
As the traditional forces in the Ottoman Empire allied with religious functionaries
against any kind of effort towards the western-modern state, secularism was also a means of
eliminating traditional obstacles to modernization. Since the new Turkish Republic needed
cultural traits for a new society because the leader had denied the Ottoman cultural heritage,
the new cultural traits were formed opposite to the previous one. This explains why there
suddenly occurred realistic, three-dimensional representations in the form of statues and
25
Andrew Mango, “Kemalism in a New Century,” in Brian W. Beelay (ed.), Turkish Transformation.
New Century – New Challenge, 2002, Cambridgeshire: The Eothen Press, p. 22.
monuments all over Turkey. If Islamic principles oppose the idea of creating an idol, the
secularists would definitely respond contrarily.
The period 1923-26 is a critical juncture of the republic. Kemalism had started at the
end of the 1920s and became a real cult in the early 1930s. Monuments and sculptures were
produced at that time including those in Samsun, Ankara and on Taksim Square in Istanbul.
Producing monuments and sculptures is partly emphasizing Kemalism into the Turkish
society. Visual representation is used for politics in order to unify the nation of the ―new‖
republic, since the previous Islam culture predominantly prohibited the making of any
figurative, three-dimensional art. The Kemalist ideology was the principal factor in the
development of statuary in Turkey.
The first monuments erected in Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara, and other important centers
were commissioned from foreign artists such as Pietro Canonica (Italian), Heinrich Krippel
(German), Anton Hanack and Josep Thorak (Austrian), all of whom built the equestrians and
monuments of Atatürk: Monument of Victory in Ankara, Monument of Ataturk on Horseback
in Samsun, Monument of Victory in Afyon by Krippel, Monument of Ataturk on Horseback
in front of the Ankara Ethnography Museum and Monument of the Republic in Taksim,
Istanbul by Canonica, Monument of Trust in Ankara by both Hanak and Thorak are the major
works. These Monuments took their places as examples of "official art" in Turkey and were
models to many Monuments of Ataturk produced in the 1970's. These artists were hired to
produce objects that previously did not exist. The artists portrayed the leader in Western
civilian clothes, or in military outfits.26 In my opinion, the most important monument of this
kind is Cumhuriyet Anıtı (Monument of the Republic) at Taksim Square in Istanbul (Fig. 5,
6).
To understand the significance of this monument, we need to consider it within the
entire project of the re-arrangement of the visual aspect of the city of Istanbul. Even though
Atatürk moved the capital to the city bearing no references to the Islam-Ottoman culture
(Ankara), he attempted to demolish the power of the mosque, the sign of the Ottoman power
in the old capital of Istanbul too. By moving the city center from the Sultanahmet area where
Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia), Sultan Ahmet Camii (the Blue Mosque), and Topkapı Palace are
located to Istiklal Avenue in Beyoglu district on the European side of Istanbul, he emphasized
the new ideology of the state and the sign of the modern-secular conqueror by erecting the
monument Cumhuriyet Anıtı (Monumennt of the Republic) in the middle of Taksim Square.
In the monument, which was established in 1928 to commemorate the formation of
the Turkish Republic in 1923, one can see the figure of Atatürk, his colleague Ismet Inonu
26
Esra Özyürek, Nostalgia for the Modern. State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey, 2006,
Durham and London: Duke University Press, p. 96.
and soldiers standing together. In the middle of the group, Atatürk came to represent and
embody the new nation and the ―new man‖ that the republic aimed to create. This monument
has two sides, one composed of a group of soldiers and generals, depicting the War of
Independence, and the opposite side depicting the political leadership, Atatürk and his cohorts
are in modern civilian clothing. The monument signifies the formation of a new independent
state found not only upon a military victory, but also upon the norms of modernity and
secularism. Therefore, Cumhuriyet Anıtı does not only declare the republican state of the new
nation, but it also challenges the iconophobia of the old regime in their space (Istanbul).
Later young Turkish sculptors were able to get commissions too. The German
sculptor Rudolf Belling was invited to Turkey in 1937 to re-organize the teaching in the
sculpture department at the State Art School.27 This played an important role in producing
national sculptors whose works mainly are statues and monuments commissioned by the state.
The boom of sculpture practice, to be more precise, the statuary in Turkey is a result of the
demand in erecting Atatürk‘s statues and monuments of the Kemalist government. Laws and
regulations were set up to maintain that Atatürk was represented in every public office,
classroom, courthouse, prison, and police station. State-funded artists, the State Supplies
Office, and privately owned business satisfied the great demand from state institutions. The
few styles of Atatürk‘s imagery in the market fitted the serious aura of such institutions well.
Mehmet İnci was among the first Turks to produce statues of Atatürk in the period
between 1936 and 1940. His son, Necati, who still practices his father‘s profession in a studio
originally built in 1942, in the Maltepe district of Istanbul, recounts, ―That standard look that
you are accustomed to see[ing] in Atatürk statues was first created in my father‘s studio as a
mold.‖28 The İnci studio had produced images of Atatürk in army uniform, as found in front of
military institutions; teaching the Latin alphabet to Turkish youth, as encountered in front of
many schools; on top of a rearing horse, as in public squares; dressed in bowler hat, tailcoat,
and cloak by cultural institutions; and taking his first footstep in Samsun to start a War of
Independence, as seen on mountain or hill tops all over Turkey and Northern Cyprus (Fig. 7).
There are three basic kinds of Atatürk statue: those depicting him as a soldier, as a statesman,
or as a man of the people (I will return to the İnci studio in the following chapter).
27
The State Art School was founded in 1883 by Osman Hamdi Bey when Turkey was still under the
Ottoman ruler. The school followed the model of Western academies and was based on European culture,
being the only school in Turkey that gave education in sculpture at that time. The department of sculpture,
although existed, but had very much less popular compared to painting. See Alev Çinar, Modernity, Islam,
and secularism in Turkey, 2005, Minneapolis, MN [etc.]: University of Minnesota Press.
28 Yael Navaro-Yashin, Faces of the State. Secularism and Public Life in Turkey. 2002. Princeton and
Oxford: Princeton University Press, p. 89.
This phenomenon shows that the literati of the new, dominant culture would reject
any concepts the old culture may have had; the previous one could only be of negative value,
it was something to be rejected. The Ottoman pictorial tradition was largely disregarded. As
there had been no such realistic images of noble persons the same way as those of Atatürk,
the presence of Atatürk‘s statues can be seen as a counteraction towards the old tradition of
the Ottoman. In the same time, it visualized and established Kemalism into the public mind.
Statuary in Turkey, in this circumstance, had a political significance. Atatürk‘s statues
became the new city centers replacing the mosques. Seen in this light, the (omni)presence of
Atatürk‘s statues and monuments is very political, because it is the act of conqueror over the
non-iconic culture of Islam.
Siam
Whereas the emergence of the figurative image in the form of sculptures and statues
in Turkey took place under internal politics circumstance, the Siamese new conceptions of
portraiture and image-making were very much due to international politics. The relations
between the Siamese and European royal courts during the reigns of King Mongkut and King
Chulalongkorn contributed significantly to the creation of the royal portrait in a realistic
sense. The influx of western cultures through diplomats, missionaries, merchants as well as
seamen created a perfect condition for cultural transfer between the Siamese and the
Europeans, especially among the royal elites and the high-ranking court officials. One of the
most important persons in the development of portraiture in Siam was Bishop Pallegoix, the
French clergyman, who resided in Bangkok for thirty years.29 The Bishop introduced
photography to the Siamese. He also encouraged King Mongkut, whom was known for his
great interest in western culture and science, to pose for photograph taking sessions.
In the meantime, photographs, paintings, and statues of European kings and their
royal families were sent as tributes to the Siamese courts. The Siamese elites adopted this
tradition as a diplomatic strategy for strengthening the relationship with Western monarchies
and as a sign of the ―modern‖ country. This policy was intended to present Siam as an equal
counterpart in international relationships, and its king as a head of state comparable to
European monarchs. The state of modernization can be seen in the court‘s acceptance of the
practice of taking photographs of the reigning monarch, as well as having the king‘s portraits
painted and sculptures produced. This marks a profound difference in the form of portraiture
compared to that of Turkey; the Kemalist encouraged the production of the three-dimensional
29
Poshyananda, p. 338.
works (sculpture, statue, and monument),30 but the Siamese elite produced both two-
dimensional and three-dimensional images.
King Mongkut‘s portrait photographs, for instance, were sent among royal gifts to
Queen Victoria in 1861. These portraits display King Mongkut seated, wearing a Western-
style jacket, ‘โจงกระเบน’ (chongkrabane, traditional Thai-style trousers), and a tartan designed
cap (Fig. 8). The fact that the king granted permission to have his photograph taken suggests
the influence of western-scientific thoughts, as it is opposed to the taboos in making a
representative of the living.
Apinan Poshyananda mentions that the bronze busts of Emperor Napoleon III of
France and Empress Eugiènie de Montijou sent as gifts from the Emperor in 1859, initiated
the royal preference for sculptures of living persons in the Siamese court.31 Later on, in 1863,
the French government sent a free-standing bronze statue of King Mongkut (Fig. 9), in a
standing position wearing a Western-style jacket, chongkrabane, and a tartan scotch cap.
Details of the face, the crease of the clothes, and the decoration as well as the ornaments,
make the image look alive. Chatrousse‘s work brought about a great change to the sculpture
practice in Siam. The king commissioned a Siamese sculptor to create a life-size image of
him. Luang Theprojanana (Plub), who later held the title of Phraya Chindarangsan,
inexperienced in making human figure, was responsible for making a royal figure according
to the western notion of portraiture. The King himself posed for a modeling session. This was
the first time that a Siamese sculptor made a portrait sculpture of the reigning monarch.
Luang Theprojanana showed his artistic execution in King Mongkut‘s sculpture,
combining the lifelike notion of Western art with the smoothness and simplicity of traditional
Siamese art. This put an end to the superstition forbidding the modeling of a living person for
fear that it might curtail a person‘s life. However, the sculpture was not actually cast, as it was
considered inauspicious to melt the wax model and cast it into a mould. The statue was made
of plaster and coated with paint. It was only in 1960 that the image was cast from the plaster
model to produce three bronze replica statues (Fig. 10).
Having portraits fully became a fashion at the Siamese court in the reign of King
Chulalongkorn. The demand in commissioning European artists to make royal portraits for
the royal court decoration was increasing and eventually became a trend. The construction
and decoration of the royal palace, the throne halls, and many large and small royal residences
created more space to display artworks. Consequently, many photographs of the kings, the
queen, the consorts, the members of the royal family, and the high-ranking senior officials
30
I assumed that it is because both painting and photography of the noble (the Sultans) had already existed in
the Ottoman era.
31 Poshyananda, ibid. p. 339.
were sent to a large number of painting studios in Europe, where artists were commissioned
to paint them. These paintings were later displayed in various royal residences and throne
halls.
When King Chulalongkorn first visited Europe in 1897, he even seated as a model for
the painters. In his 1 June letter to Queen Saovabha Phongsri, the king described Michele
Gordigiani, a Florentine painter who was hired to paint the group portrait of the royal family
as below:
…Professor Gordigiani is excellent. He can paint without sketching. But he is so
strictly meticulous. He refuses to paint anything that he does not see, except when it
is absolutely necessary such as in your case that he has to guess. But we have to make
up a beautifully dressed model and it is supposedly to be you sitting shyly on a chair
so that he can paint. It must be his habit as even when I left to take a walk somewhere
else, the empty chair where I sat must stay exactly there. It must not be moved. When
he was painting, he made funny gestures to make me smile slightly so that he could
observe the facial expression… 32
The letter shows how the King admired the way in which Gordigiani worked, as well
as his realistic skill. ―When he was painting, he made funny gestures to make me smile
slightly so that he could observe the facial expression‖ significantly illustrates how much both
the painter and the model paid attention to the likeness presence, especially of the face, in the
painting. This attitude is totally different from the old, conventional attitude towards the
visual presentation of the noble that valued the artistic skill featuring the idealistic,
patternized characters.
I think that King Chulalongkorn knew very well the power of the image and its
potential use as a representative of himself. During his visit to Europe, which was a
diplomatic trip rather than a leisure activity, since he was searching for an alliance against the
French imperialist invasion, a lot of his pictures appeared in the foreign media. The most
important one, I presume, is that of the photograph taken with Tsar Nicolas II in St.
Petersburg (Fig. 11). Princess Poonpisamai Diskul wrote in ‘ประชมพระนพนธ เลม ๑’ (Prachoom
Phra Ni Phon Vol. 1) that when the Tsar knew that his old friend King Chulalongkorn was
having a problem with France, the Tsar said, ―This is not a difficult matter. Tomorrow we
32
The letter from King Chulalongkorn to Queen Saovabha Phongsri sent from Italy to Thailand was referred
to in Poshyananda, ibid. p. 356.
shall take photograph together.‖33 That photograph was sent to the French newspaper,
„L‟Illustration‟ and later published on 14 September 1897. As Russia and France had signed
the Dual Alliance, the French President Félix Faure had to arrange a warm welcome for King
Chulalongkorn at La Gare Du Nord in Paris. The caricature is one of the evidences of this
event (Fig. 12). The meeting, however, did not succeed well since the strong relationship
between France and Russia made that Russia could not help Siam that much.34
King Chulalongkorn later on searched for other alliances, especially with Germany.
The postcard showing the King meeting with Bismarck proves Siam, while had just asked for
the hand of Russia, also had a relationship with Germany (Fig. 13). Through many diplomatic
strategies, Siam, although had to cede some territory to the French and the British notably
claims on parts of what are now Laos, Cambodia and some northern parts of Malaysia,
maintained its independence as a buffer state in the end.35
Apart from the newspaper, postcards were another interesting form of publication
that made King Chulalongkorn visible to the public consciousness of the Europeans at that
time. His image that was transformed into postcards were widely produced and distributed
(by the Europeans). His portraits in different kinds of media functioned as an icon to certify or
manifest some sort of presence; they are the testimonies. The image shows that the person
exists: that he was there, such as King Chulalongkorn with the Tsar was presented the way I
described above. Furthermore, the publication of the king‘s portraits in foreign media during
the Royal Visit to Europe proves the Siamese King an active player in the international
political and economic power-play and how he knew the potential usage of his own
portraitures (Fig. 14). In this way, portraiture can be seen as first, a sign of modernity in Siam,
and second, as a presence of the modern (the King as a modern man).
33
Poonpisamai Diskul, Princess, ประชมพระนพนธ เลม ๑ (Prachoom Phra Ni Phon Vol. 1), cited in Kraireuk
Nana, การเมอง “นอกพงศาวดาร” รชกาลท ๕ เบองหลงพระบาทสมเดจพระจลจอมเกลาเจาอยหวเสดจประพาสยโรป (Politics outside
annals. Behind the scene of King Chulalongkorn‘s Royal Visits to Europe), 2006, Bangkok: Matichon, p. 30.
34 Although Tsar Nicolas II had a friendship with King Chulalongkorn, the Dual Alliance between Russia
and France made the Tsar could not completely take the side with Siam in its problem with France. See more
detail in Nana, ibid, p. 47 – 59.
35 While it is generally understood that Siam was never colonized by Western powers, Thongchai
Winichakul proposed that it was indeed a crypto-colony (or, an indirect colony). See Thongchai Winichakul,
“ประวตศาสตรไทยแบบราชาชาตนยม จากยคอาณานคมอ าพรางสราชาชาตนยมใหม หรอลทธเสดจพอ ของกระฎมพไทยในปจจบน ”
(Royalist-Nationalist History: From the Era of Crypto-Colonialism to the new Royalist-Nationalism, or the
Contemporary Thai Bourgeois Cult of Rama V), ศลปวฒนธรรม, Year 23, Vol. 1 (November, 2001), p. 56 – 65.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I started with the pictorial traditions of the Ottoman Empire and Siam
as sharing a similarity in prohibiting realistic images of the living. Before an encounter with
the West, both did not allow for any concession in their rejection of realistic images,
especially that of a noble person. By tracing back the histories of the early republican period
of Turkey and of the Fifth reign of Siam in relation to the political circumstance, I found the
emergence of realistic images deeply associated with the political power-plays both in the
domestic and the international level. The point is to see the realistic representation in the
statuary in Turkey and Siam as a form of a political practice.
In the 1930s, when Atatürk was head of the state, he employed the uses of the statue
and the monument from western culture for establishing and expanding his authority and the
new ideology of the new-founded state to the Turkish citizen. As a part of the national
construction of the Republic of Turkey, the founder of the republic deprived the power of the
previous regime, namely the Islamic Ottoman by replacing their signs (mosque) with his
statues in the centers of the cities all over Turkey. Foreign sculptors had been hired to make
and erect Atatürk statues, meanwhile Turkish sculptors had gradually appeared and they had
also taken up the trade. In this period, Atatürk statues were produced out of marble or cement,
they were erected in the schools, official institutions, and public offices as well as in the
public space. These statues and monuments emphasized the omnipotent authority of the state
through colossal representations of the leader visible in the public space.
So it is apparent that Atatürk‘s encouragement and support of the statuary in Turkey
aims at challenging the Islamic Ottoman pictorial discourse of which the production of the
statue was strictly forbidden. The myth around him, for instance, Atatürk in the War of
Independence (which associated with the foundation of the new nation-state) is one of the
themes expressed in his statues and monuments. The theme ―the victory in the War of
Independence‖ made both the outsider and the insider (the Ottoman) the enemies of the state.
It was never an abstract symbol represented in the republican monuments, but a figurative
one, that is, the figure of Atatürk. I should mention, too, that these representations of Atatürk
were mostly produced in massive sizes. Atatürk in the public statues and monuments are
muscular and larger than life-size, placing him on a high pedestal that makes the viewer look
at him from the lower position. He was always depicted as ―the great.‖
Publicly erected monuments and other forms of mediating and displaying images
serve as the declaration for the triumph of the new over the old: the old regime and beliefs in
the case of Turkey and the old beliefs and administrative system in the case of Siam. The
erection of Ataturk‘s monuments is an act against the Ottoman dynasty that governed by the
rule of forbidding images of Islam. In this way, the desires for modernizing the new state (the
Turkish Republic) and destructing the power of the old regime are indistinguishable.
In Siam, having the statutes and the monument produced too, King Chulalongkorn‘s
admiration of western culture (which he considered as ―the civilized‖) helped him
constructing a nationalistic sentiment of the Siamese around the monarch. Being civilized as
the westerner, the Siamese elites, the only group that was accessible to western science and
knowledge at that time, annihilated the traditional, superstitious belief that had prohibited the
realistic portrait of the living, blaming that it was irrational and un-scientific— a sign of an
―uncivilized.‖ This conception of ―the civilized‖ in the Siamese elite‘s imagination is a part of
the way in which they, especially King Chulalongkorn himself, were attempting to restrict the
colonialist expansion.36 Although I do not deny that the adoption of realistic portraiture
making was a fashion at the Siamese court, it was a strategy for dealing with Western powers
as well. That means we have to consider its emergence and its uses seriously. King
Chulalongkorn‘s images that were distributed in Europe in foreign media is not only a
testimony of him as an active player in the colonialist game, but, regarding the photograph
taken with Tsar Nicolas II for instance, also a part of the game itself— a bluff.
Let me come back to Belting‘s notion of the image: the presence of an absence. An
image makes an absence visible by transforming it into a new kind of presence. He remarks
that images happen between who look at them, and their media, with which they respond to
our gaze. Therefore, an image exists as a result of an interaction between our bodies (thus our
minds) and the visual.37 There must be ―something‖ there to be seen, that ―something‖ is an
image, which is an embodiment of the absent body.
Furthermore, in his other work „Likeness and Presence: a history of image before an
era of art,‟ Belting points out that the image derives its authority in the first case from the
authentic appearance of a noble person, and in the second case from its ―correct‖ treatment of
an event in the history of the national crisis.38 The portrait can be an accurate likeness if it
renders the person distinguishable and recognizable. These are the two things that had been
absent in the Ottoman Empire and Siam before an encounter with the West; the image of the
person and the conception of realism.
In those periods, the authorities had sustained their powers by being absent from their
populace. They were too far, too divine to be approached by the ordinary. But after western
knowledge and representation discourse came, the authorities, with the modern perspective,
employed western realistic portraiture for making their powers visible. The absence became
36
For the Siamese conception of the ―civilized‖ and of the ―modern‖ in relation to western colonialism,
please see Thongchai Winichakul, “The Quest for „Siwilai‟: A geographical discourse of Civilization
Thinking in the late 19th and early 20
th Century Siam,” Asian Studies, 59, 3 (Aug 2000), p. 528 – 549.
37 Belting, p. 50.
38 Hans Belting, Likeness and presence: a history of the image before an era of art (trans. by Edmund
Jephcott), 1994, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 10.
the omnipresent presence. We can see them everywhere in their countries, emphasizing their
powers into the public consciousness.
And, as the value of the portrait lies in its true likeness to the model, of course, the
portrait that is the representative, the embodiment of that person, must be treated as if it is the
person him/herself. Interestingly, both Atatürk and King Chulalongkorn were the
authoritarians who initiated the new kinds of political ideology in their regimes. Therefore,
such ideologies and their identities are intrinsically inseparable. Taking the visual
representation into account, the monumental portraiture is, in this sense, the visualization of
the power of the heads of the states in a figurative form, which are their figures with
recognizable faces.
I should remind here that the portrait as an embodiment of the person is the very same
idea as that of the traditional beliefs of the Ottoman and the Siamese that prohibited the
making of the images of the living. In their perceptions, portraiture was the transformation of
the self into the objects. These agents of modernity put the attitude towards the portraiture on
that same ground, but instead of prohibiting it, they used it. This is how I see the way in
which Atatürk and King Chulalongkorn were aware of the power and the potentiality of
images. They constructed the myths around them, as the great heroes, the national ancestor,
the beloved, and the role model for their subjects, by using their images as representatives of
all these ideas. The unified nations were proceeding through these monuments that
constructed the collective memory for the citizens of the nations.
Chapter 2 Political Aspects of the Adoption of the Realistic Art Discourse and
Nationalism in the Figures of the National Fathers: Images of Atatürk and King
Chulalongkorn in the Early Modern Period
In chapter 1, I demonstrated how western realistic pictorial discourse was imported
and served the demands of the noble indigenous. Interestingly, the adoption of western
discourse created an interesting, paradoxical adaptation: nationalism. Once being
nationalistic, it is hard, if not impossible, to accept any discourses and practices from the
outside. This sensitivity that could lead to heterophobia in the worst case was constructed and
aroused by the images whose emergences came actually out of an interaction with the
westerners. The authorities, namely Atatürk and King Chulalongkorn, were the agents of
western modernity in their lands.
Through their adoption of portrait-making, they placed themselves in the mind of
their subjects, made their subjects see them the way they wished, and aroused a nationalist
sensibility through seeing their figures. In his famous work „Imagined Communities:
Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism,‟ Benedict Anderson defined the nation
as ―an imagined political community― and imagined as both inherently limited and
sovereign.‖ It is imagined because the members of the nation will never know most of their
fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the images
of their communion.39 This chapter will investigate how the images of these authorities, in a
form of a monument, motivated a nationalistic sense among the populace, created an
imagination of the nation, and constructed an imagined community that is the nation.
Defining Turkey: Atatürk’s Statues and Monuments in the Early Republican Period
―Nationalism is not an awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations
where they do not exist.‖
Ernest Geller, Thought and Change (1965, p. 169)
Nation, nationality, nationalism are cultural artifacts of a particular kind invented
under particular circumstances. According to Benedict Anderson, to understand these artifacts
properly we need to consider carefully how they have come into historical being, in what
ways their meanings have changed over time, and why, today, they command such profound
emotional legitimacy.40 As a new-founded nation-state, Turkey needed to build a sense of
39
Anderson, p. 6.
40 Anderson, ibid. p. 5
nationalism, a new identity that differs from that of the Ottoman. In this part I will focus at
the materialization of the political-thus-national ideology in the Turkish society in the early
republican period. As I mentioned earlier, Atatürk and the Kemalist government heavily
encouraged the development of sculptural practice and the production of statues. These
statues were erected everywhere in Turkey, emphasizing Kemalist ideology and power,
anthropomorphized in the figure of Atatürk, in the public / national space and thereby in the
people‘s consciousness.
The construction of national space is an important component that seeks to institute a
new sense of nationhood replacing the old one. In the case of Turkey, it appears in the form of
placing Atatürk‘s monuments and statues in the cities. A new sense of nationhood comes to
life and is reified through the erection and placement of symbols of the nation, that is, Atatürk
in urban spaces. The placement of monuments and icons of the nation becomes one of the
essential means through which the national ideology finds material presence and authority in
public life. Second, such interventions serve to establish the victory and authority of the
official national ideology over the Ottoman, the previous era. Atatürk‘s iconic figure evoked
in official nationalist discursive frames the whole display as a victory and prevalence of one
nationalist ideology over others.41
The city planning is the way in which the state forces its habitants to gaze at specific
things. It plays a key role in visualizing and emphasizing the new order. Architecture had a
special importance to the political leader who sought to influence all aspects of human life.
The following examples will illustrate how the sculptural practice in the form of monuments,
statues, and busts in relation to city planning functioned as a part of Atatürk‘s plan to create a
new political ideology and a new sense of the nation, that is a secular republic. Sculpture,
previously taboo in the Ottoman empire, was then used as a part of, and in conjunction with,
Kemalist‘s city planning.
1. Atatürk as the Father of the New Nation: The Victory Monument (Ankara)
Atatürk changed the capital city from Istanbul to Ankara, the city in Central Anatolia
in 1923. It declared the new identity of the new Turkish state, founded upon the new norm,
namely Western-oriented secularism. The city gained prominence under the leadership of
Atatürk during the national resistance which followed World War I, and it was declared the
capital of the new Turkish Republic on October 13th, 1923 when the War of Independence
freed Turkey from foreign occupation.
41
Çinar, p. 100.
Most regimes, especially new ones, wish to make their mark both physically and
emotionally on the places they rule. The most tangible way of doing so is by constructing
buildings and monuments. Instead of doing an iconoclastic act over the Ottoman symbols in
Istanbul as the Ottoman had done with Christian symbols of the Byzantine as we can see by
the traces in Hagia Sophia (Fig. 15), the leader of the new nation-state chose another city.
Ankara was chosen because of an absence of any reference and thereby relation to the Islamic
Ottoman empire. It was seen as an ideal location that would rise as the embodiment of
secularism, modernity, and a Western-oriented sense of civilization that constituted the main
principles of the founding ideology.
It was necessary for Atatürk to materialize the declaration of the independence and
victory of the new nation-state into a concrete form. A monument is the best choice serving
that purpose since it functions as an object for the cult of remembrance. What images in such
monument could be better that that of the founder, especially in a very glorified posture such
as riding on the horse back— an equestrian?
Designed by the Austrian sculptor, Heinrich Krippel whose proposal won the
competition, the Victory Monument was completed and erected in 1927 to commemorate the
War of Independence that had been fought and won under the leadership of Atatürk (Fig. 16,
17). Significantly, the rules for the competition that were used to find a design for the Victory
Monument had specifically stated this theme and pointed out in its thematic description that
the monument should reflect Turkey‘s great victory, not only against foreign army, but also
the enemy inside, which had been the Ottoman rulers (for their wrong-decided collaboration
which led the empire to a defamed-state called the ―Sick Man of Europe‖). Reliefs and
several quotations from Atatürk‘s speeches carved on both sides of the monument depicted
the war fought against both these enemies. The Victory Monument carved this incrimination
of the Ottoman rule and of Istanbul into stone and inscribed it in the center of the new capital
Ankara.42
The founder of the Republic appears in a military uniform on a high, multifaceted
marble pedestal decorated with scenes from the war. Again, we have to consider the
importance of the location, the spatial context of the erection of the monument to understand
its significance. The urban planning of Ankara made Ulus Meydanı (National Square), which
was previously given the name as Hakimiyet-i Milliye Meydanı (National Sovereignty Square)
the city center at the time of the founding the new capital. The Victory Monument was
erected in the heart of it. It is precisely Atatürk‘s face that is turning to the first parliament
building, whereas other official buildings and the central train station that connect all
42
Çinar, ibid. p. 106.
railroads in Turkey stand around. Beyond the surrounding buildings, the figure of Atatürk is
looking at the city that extends downward from underneath the monument. The height and the
strategic positioning of this monument placed the newly emerging city under the gaze of
Atatürk, as if he was closely monitoring the growth of the new city under his feet, overseeing
the development of Turkish modernity and nationalism in the direction he ordained. The
whole environment identifies this area as the most important area, the center of the new
nation in which the Victory Monument is the most potent sign.
Below the equestrian figure of Atatürk, three figures stand in the three lower corners
of the pedestal representing the Turkish nation: two soldiers and a peasant woman. On the
front face of the bottom platform were the figures of two wolves, making a reference to the
grey wolf, an idol appropriated from ancient Turkish mythology, which were later removed
when the monument was moved to the new location on the square. The wolves made a
reference to the ethnic roots of official nationalism, which locates the origin of the Turkish
nation in pre-Islamic central Asia, a root that was constructed during the era of Atatürk as
well. The two soldiers and the peasant woman represent the ―unnamed heroes‖ who had
selflessly served their country and took their place on the Victory Monument alongside
Atatürk as the gendered archetypes of the ideal citizen.
The Victory Monument celebrated the victory ideology; Atatürk in a military uniform
leading the Turks in the War of Independence, of which the name already declares the state of
glory. Meanwhile, the ―victory‖ in this place signifies the victory of the new political regime
over the old one: the Ottoman. To conclude this, I would say that this monument signifies that
this new nation-state was constructed out of the war leading by this eminent figure. The
monument created cult centers to promote the regime‘s glorification of war, patriotism and
the great military leader. While looking at the landscape below, Atatürk gave birth to the
whole new nation, the Republic of Turkey far beyond the capital Ankara. The notion of the
national ancestor, who also appears in the way people call him ―the ancestor of Turks‖ (Atam
= my ancestor, Turk = the Turks) led him to the other role: the protector of the nation and its
people.
There is the sense of power and force in the city planning of the Kemalist government
in the state of the nation-building. Going back to the idea that the city planning directs the
gaze of the people, it is not so much that Atatürk watching over the nation he had constituted,
but it is indeed the people that have been watching him, being unconsciously forced to believe
that he is watching them. It is not the people that are in the gaze of the bronze-casted Atatürk,
but Atatürk in the gaze of the Turkish people who defined themselves as his descendants.
2. Atatürk as the Guide of the Turks: Monument to a Secure, Confident Future
(Ankara)
Due to the expansion of the city towards the south, the center of Ankara moved to
Kızılay where Güvenlik Anıtı (Monument to a Secure Confident Future) was set up in
Güvenpark in 1935. Sculpted by Anton Hanak and Josef Thorak, the monument displays
Atatürk‘s inscription: Türk Ogün Çalıs Güven (Turk! Be proud, work hard, and be confident)
illustrated with two, huge, muscular figures of naked male individuals carrying weapons on
one side (Fig. 18), and Atatürk in a civilian attire with four naked, muscular youths standing
hand-in-hand on the other side (Fig. 19). The reliefs at the base that show working male and
female individuals illustrate the inscription, Türk Ogün Çalıs Güven encouraging Turkish
people to take pride in themselves, to work hard, and to have confidence (Fig. 20). This
monument visualized the ideal Turks, the way their national father wished them to be.
All those figures including that of the group leader Atatürk, express the national
obsession with the ideal body and espoused nationalistic, state approved values like loyalty,
work, and family. The notions of health, strength, collective action and willingness to
sacrifice the self for the common good, seen in many Nazi works with explicit glorification of
militarism, is obviously shown in this monument. Sculptors Josef Thorak and Arno Breker
were the most famous sculptors of the Nazi regime, and the Nazi style and iconography used
in this monument is remarkable and significant. Nazi art and architecture, which had an
important role in creating the new order in the Third Reich, gave the very same idea to the
Turkish authorities; city planning catching a special interest for those who sought to establish
and control every aspect of their people‘s life by visualizing the ideology they prefer, and, to
place it in the public space.
The relation with Nazi art and architecture in Turkey is undeniable. Sibel Bozdoğan
mentioned that there was an admiration for German nationalism and its cultural artifacts since
there were several contacts with visiting professors from the Third Reich.43 Official Turkish
art and architecture in the 1930s – 1940s reflect the attempt to materialize the state power as
well as in constructing a sense of nationalism through the monumental forms. As the two
sculptors, Josef Thorak and Anton Hanack, were both Nazi artists, the Monument to a Secure
Confident Future is associated with Nazi art ideology. While all the figures look very
powerful and heroic with their muscular, monumental features, Atatürk appears the most
outstanding one. His figure, in high relief stands against the granite wall, and his serious face
portrays him as a charismatic authoritarian. The inscription on the granite base on the other
43
Sibel Bozdoğan, “Art and architecture in modern Turkey: the republican period,” in Reşat Kasaba (ed.),
The Cambridge History of Turkey, Vol. 4 Turkey in the Modern World, 2008, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, p. 438.
side, bearing his name, sends the message to all the civilian Turk. The great leader‘s civilian
costume creates a sense of intimacy between the guidance-given national father and his
children. His image visualizes the national ideology of the new nation; he (as the Turk) feels
proud and confident for his hard-working, thereby portraying him as an example, a role model
for all Turks.
The two monuments are the examples that best show how nationalism as part of
nation-building, and how the ideal citizen of the new-founded nation state supposed to be, are
conceptualized in one image: Atatürk. The Victory Monument expresses the glory and the
independence of the Turkish republic after the army won in the War of Independence through
the image of the great leader in a military uniform. The Monument to a Secure Confident
Future, on the other hand, displays Atatürk in a civilian attire, didactically telling the people
of the republic to behave, for the future of the nation that is, in turn, the future of themselves
as a citizen. The first monument portrays Atatürk as the military leader saving Turkey from
the enemies both inside and outside, giving birth to the new nation. The second one makes
him a role model of Turkish citizen. These two types of image can be conceptualized into
one: the forefather of all Turks, guiding his descendants to a secure future.
The power of the monuments may be perceived through the Nazi style that depicted
him, together with other anonymous figures, as a very strong, muscular, serious, and lastly,
iconic figure. These monuments in which all figures are larger than life size have a powerful
impact one can hardly resist. This kind of pictorial scheme became a pattern seen in other
monuments and statues erected during the early republican period, though they may not
always have the same scale. The figure of Atatürk replaced the mosque, the non-figurative
sign, of the Ottoman sultan in every city all over Turkey.
In the same manner, Ankara became a city model for the transformation of the
Islamic-Ottoman space into a secular one. After Ankara, the centers of other cities were
relocated from around the mosque to new-built squares where Atatürk‘s monument, statue or
bust was erected. Istanbul where Taksim Square became the center, that shifted away from
the Sultanahmet area, I described before, is an overt example of this operation. This is what
Verdery terms as ―punctuating space,‖ the use of space as a metaphor of a geological
landscape.44 Punctuating space highlights a specific landscape as a point of reference. It can
be done by placing statues in particular places and by renaming landmarks such as streets,
public squares and buildings. Atatürk also appeared as a text through the names of squares,
avenues, and boulevards thereby emphasizing his presence in the mental state of the Turkish
citizen. Through the placement of Atatürk‘s figure in the public space, nationalization and
44
Verdery, p. 39.
secularization of the land did not stop in the capital, but was extensively continued to the rest
of the country.
The Siamese and their King: Nationalism in the Equestrian Statue of King
Chulalongkorn
Not only having a significant role in international politics, King Chulalongkorn‘s
images functioned in the field of the domestic politics too. While the king had succeeded in
the administrative reforms that made everything in Siam centralized to the royal family, the
erection of King Chulalongkorn‘s equestrian on Ratchadamnoen Avenue that leads to the new
palace, has made his authority over the Siamese subjects visible. It created a bond between
him and the Siamese too. In the inscription, the king‘s veneration and kindness, especially
that related to the concept of civilization, were inscribed. The king is first, the father of all the
Siamese, and second, as a father who devoted himself for the good and the happiness of the
people, he is ‘พระปยะมหาราช’ (Phra Piya Maharaj), the Great Beloved King. The equestrian
became the monument of love and gratitude from the Siamese towards their king.
In the Fifth Reign, King Chulalongkorn‘s images served as both a weapon against
Western colonization and a tangible form of power of the monarchy that was raised to an
absolute one, the symbol of the centralization of the administration. Everything was made
centripetal.
Beside his admiration of photographs and paintings, King Chulalongkorn was also
fond of having his portrait sculptures and statues produced. In this part, I will look at his
equestrian statue at the Royal Plaza (Fig. 21). It was erected in 1908 to celebrate the fortieth
anniversary of the king‘s accession to the throne. To understand the significance of this
statue, the subject of the rise to absolute power, and the association with western city
planning, the same as that of Atatürk, must be taken into account.
Since King Chulalongkorn ascended to the throne at the age of fifteen as a young (but
ill) king, the regent and his father‘s right hand Somdet Chaophraya Si Suriyawong (Chuang
Bunnag) held the real power in the court. The members of the Bunnag family as well as their
allies were in important positions. Somdet Chaophraya Si Suriyawong also appointed Prince
Wichaichan to the position of wang na (the second king) thereby giving rise to the power play
in the court government.
During the regency period, King Chulalongkorn already started the modernization
reforms that were associated with the kingdom‘s administration, financial and military
institutions following the western model. He visited the neighboring colonies including Dutch
Java (Indonesia) in 1871 and the British colonies of Singapore, India and Rangoon (Burma) in
1872. In 1897 and 1907, the king visited Europe. (I will return to the trips to Europe in
relation to the idea of having an equestrian statue and a new perception of the public space).
His siblings and sons were educated by western tutors whom were hired in the palace; later
on, they were sent to Europe for further education. These western-educated princes, together
with the king‘s allies, came to replace the Bunnag group after their deaths or retirements in
the second half of 1880s. The administrative reform that centralized everything to the court
made King Chulalongkorn the absolute authority of the dynastic state.
What symbolizes the rise to absolute power of the King is the equestrian statue
located in the Royal Plaza. Significantly, the two visits to Europe were a crucial factor for re-
arranging the spatial dimension of the capital city that was associated with the power of the
king as the head and the body of the state. The western-style of city planning was adopted for
constructing the new area; Rajdamnern Avenue; the Dusit Palace; the Ananta Samakhom
Throne Hall; and the Royal Plaza, giving a new sense of public space and its utilities; the
symbol of the centralized administration, and proof of the relationship between the royalty
and their subjects.
During the second visit to Europe (1907) when Ratchadamnoen Avenue was already
finished and the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall was under construction, there was a plan to
celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the ruling of King Chulalongkorn, the longest reigning
monarch in the history, which would be coming in 1908. It was agreed that as a gesture of
gratitude to King Chulalongkorn who had ruled the country in peace and prosperity for a long
time, the Crown Prince Vajiravudh who was responsible for the project announced to the
Siamese to contribute money for building an object of commemoration for this special
occasion. More than 1,000,000 Baht were collected from the people of Siam.45
The governmental committee agreed on building equestrian statue as they received
the massage from France that the king appreciated the Equestrian Statue of Louis XIV (Fig.
22) at the front garden of the Versailles Palace in France. It is not completely clear that this
equestrian was the king‘s inspiration because he had mentioned that the Equestrian Statue of
King Victor Emmanuel II in Rome was gorgeous too (Fig. 23). Yet, either one of these statues
or both, the inspiration came definitely from the West. It was the western conception of
monument and taste that impressed the Siamese king, who wished to define himself as
modern, and thereby as civilized. Just like the Equestrian of Louis XIV that was placed at the
45 It is 21,307.08 EURO according to the current currency exchange (1 EUR = 46.9327 THB). The rest of the
fund was used for the foundation of the Royal Page School which later became Chulalongkorn University.
end of the long avenue of the Champs Elysées leading to the palace, the king ordered that a
statue of himself on horseback was erected somewhere between Ratchadamnoen Avenue and
the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall (Fig. 24). That would make Siam look as grand as the
European countries. 46
‘ไกลบาน’ (Klai Ban), the letter King Chulalongkorn wrote during the trip to his
daughter Princess Niphanophadol describes:
―…I sat for the sculptor {Georges Ernest Saulo} until 5 p.m. before I left for the other
who is casting the horse… But the fine fellow set out to work immediately to correct
the flaws after I sat down. More clay was added to the head and sunken cheeks. The
temple, too, received refining touches. So did the brows and the awkward mouth.
Despite the initial annoyance for having to sit for him, the annoyance was replaced by
relish as I knew that after some correcting touches, the mould would look just
fine…‖47
The message above shows the king‘s admiration of the realistic skill of the French
artist, Georges Ernest Saulo, who had made a ―true likeness‖ in the face of his sculpture in the
clay model. The face is, much more than the body, an important element of the monumental
sculpture because it makes the model identifiable and recognizable. Therefore, the realistic
skill of the artist is valuable since the face is the representative identity of someone. King
Chualongkorn and his worldview, were transferred into the statue casted at the Ateliers de la
Maison Susse Frères in Paris and sent abroad to be a monument in Bangkok. The king
appeared in a military uniform, wearing Western-style trousers instead of the chongkrabane,
riding a horse like the kings in the West instead of a white elephant. 48
While the model (the Equestrian Statue of Louis XIV and/or the Equestrian Statue of
King Victor Emmanuel II), the technique of casting monumental statue, as well as the process
of making a statue by a person sitting as the model, belong to the western culture, it fits well
46
Damrongrajanuphap, Prince, ประชมพระนพนธเบดเตลด (Prachoom phra niphon bettaled), p. 59 – 62, cited in
Surakarn Toesomboon, พระบรมรปทรงมาทามกลางบรบทสงคมและอดมการณสมยรชกาลท 5 ถงสมยหลงเปลยนแปลงการปกครอง
(Chulalongkorn Equestrian in the social and ideological context from the reign of King Chulalongkorn to
after the change to Democracy), BA Thesis (Art History), 2005, Bangkok: Faculty of Archaeology,
Silpakorn University, p. 7.
47 Chulalongkorn, King, ไกลบาน (Klai Ban), cited and translated into English in Poshyananda, p. 373.
48 The rare chang pueak (usually translated as ―white elephant‖) was considered sacred and reserved
exclusively as a mount for the Siamese monarch.
with the local desire. This statue, once erected in the middle of the new-built Royal Plaza,
became the symbol of the absolute power of the king in the public sphere. It is totally
different from the old tradition, in which the representative of the deceased kings (the
crowned Buddha I mentioned in the previous chapter) were only seen and worshipped by the
royal members, in either a religious space (temple) or in the royal space (palace). At the
occasion of celebrating the fortieth year of the accession to the throne, King Chulalongkorn‘s
equestrian statue visualized the supreme power of the Kingdom of Siam, and presented it thus
to its people. By having the statue in the Royal Plaza (which was also constructed upon a
western notion of public space: the city center), the king was more accessible than ever
before; 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.
Moreover, the fact that the statue was built by donations, the king and his subject
were bound together, acclaiming the loyalty and gratitude of the Siamese towards their Phra
Piya Maharaj (the Great Beloved King), the special title given to him in this very special
occasion. The inscription on the plaque on the base of the statute tells about the king‘s virtue,
his reign in righteousness, as he has been taking the business of government for the good and
happiness of the populace; thereby his people, who considered him as their great father, gave
him back their love and gratitude (Fig. 24, 25). The title Phra Piya Maharaj appeared for the
first time in this inscription too (Fig. 26). The equestrian statue is the symbol of unity of the
nation while it represents the gratitude and loyalty the Siamese had for their king. King
Chulalongkorn‘s equestrian created both the discourse and the concrete form of the national
unity that was built and centered by the royalty. From then on the Siamese (and now, Thai)
nationalism is inseparable from royalism.
Before I finish this part, I would like to discuss the other royal statues initiated in the
reign of King Chulalongkorn. Very similar to the crowned Buddha originated in the reign of
King Nangklao I mentioned in Chapter 1, the images of the five previous Chakri kings were
also made into objects for worship in their honor. From 1869 - 1871, Prince
Praditthavorakorn was assigned to model and cast statues, each of which was as high as the
crowned Buddha image traditionally dedicated to each king. The likeness depended on words
of those who had seen them. It was quite a problem in the case of King Phra Buddha Yotfa
Chulalok the Great since few of his contemporaries were still alive. As for other kings, it was
less troublesome since there were greater numbers of people who had seen them. Prince
Praditthavorakorn did the works according to the descriptions of these people and made
changes they wanted until they all agreed that the sculptures resembled the real persons. 49
49
Poshyananda, p. 342 – 343.
Prince Praditthavorakorn integrated traditional concepts with Western style in
modeling each image: realist features in a lifelike face, the wavy hair, and the plump body of
an elderly man. On the other hand, idealistic elements are represented in the curved lines of
the body, the upright posture, and the sense of tranquility found also typical for the Buddha
image. These statues were made to be representative of the Divine Fathers of the Rattanakosin
period. Yet, the most interesting one is that of King Mongkut. It was made in exactly the
same model as the statue of Phra Syama Devadhiraj, the divine monarchical protector of the
Kingdom (Fig. 27). It is remarkable that King Mongkut‘s statute has the same gestures and
accessory as that of the sacred statue, or perhaps, the other way around, the new Phra Syama
Devadhiraj has the face of King Mongkut. On the wooden panel, there is an inscription
written in Chinese ―a place of Phra Syama Devadhiraj.‖ Here again, by having an identifiable
face (as King Mongkut), the likeness presence of the statue legitimated the ruling power of
the monarchy over the land of Siam; the king as the royal-national divine protector. The
monarchy, then, has been given gratitude and loyalty by their subjects.
Although Phra Syama Devadhiraj was never all-time accessible for the public like
King Chulalongkorn‘s equestrian, its narrative has been told to the Siamese (and later, the
Thais). While King Chulalongkorn embodies the conception and the discourse of the western-
civilized, King Mongkut, in the form of Phra Syama Devadhiraj conveys the sacred
dimension rooted in religious and supernatural belief. Integrating this with the narrative of
King Chulalongkorn secured independence of the nation from Western powers. Phra Syama
Devadhiraj and the equestrian constructed the discourse of authority and legitimacy of the
monarchy in the public consciousness. Tradition and modern were hybridized, serving the
demand of the monarch.
Conclusion
Firstly, a monument is an object that creates a memory for a collective (in our case,
the people of the nation). It materializes the selected persons and/or events in the past and has
frozen them, made them visible forever. Secondly, a monument makes an abstract idea such
as political ideology into a concrete form, making it perceivable and easily comprehensible.
In a monument, there is always a message to be sent. That message is, too, selective and
imaginative, based on a preference. In this way, visualization (making the invisible visible)
and any form of image production engage in the ritual of remembrance. In this respect, after
the persons whom became the monument, passed away, those persons never really die from
the public memory. Moreover, they are capable to be revived, and their meaning may be
altered. This will be the subject of Chapter 3 (The Return of the Monarchy: Images and King
Chulalongkorn Cult) and Chapter 4 (The Revival of the Dead: Images of Atatürk in Turkey‘s
Contemporary Politics).
The use of the portraits of Atatürk and King Chulalongkorn is to serve their political
purposes because, as they surely knew the power of representation, the images are to be not
only looked at, but also to be believed in.
Lastly, I will finish this chapter with the Turkish poem entitled ―The Picture‖
(Resim), which was authored by the nationalist poet Behçet Necatigil for Turkish students in
the elementary school. This poem teaches students how to feel about Atatürk‘s picture which
faces them in every classroom, yet, it can be applied for the way in which the Siamese feel for
King Chulalongkorn too. If the response emerges from the dialectic between particular image
and particular beholder, as both great leaders are the fathers-rulers of the nations (though they
already passed away), their children would always have to keep them in mind, and to respond
to them the way children would do to their fathers:
We work hard Çalışkanız çünkü
Because when we work Çalışınca
We see Atatürk smile Bakarız Atatürk güldü
When we make a mistake Bir yanlışlık yapsak
His eyes get cloudy Bulutlanır gözleri
We understand Anlarız
Atatürk became sad Atatürk üzüldü
If we go right next to the wall Gelsek kürsünün dibine
He still sees us Görür bizi
As he looks down Eğilince
If we go all the way back Kalksak gitsek gerilere
If we sit at the back Otursak arkalarda
We feel without lifting our head up Başımızı kaldırmadan duyarız
Atatürk is here Atatürk arada
…
Atatürk, through my life Atatürk artık ömrüm oldukça
You are in front of me with this picture Bu resminle karşımdasın
…
Just like in the classroom Tıpkı sinıftaki gibi
In everything I do Yapacağım bir işte
This picture is my guide Bu resimdir rebherim
If I reach toward something bad Kötülüğe uzanırsam
Frown your eyes Çat kaşlarımı
Let my hands freeze Tutulsun ellerim
Just like in the classroom Tıpkı sinıftaki gibi
Through my whole life Bütün ömrüm boyunca
In everything I do Yapacağım bir işte
If I am right and good İyi doğru oldumsa
Show me your happiness Sevincini belli et
Smile Gülümse50
50
Özyürek, p. 117-118.
Chapter 3 The Return of the Monarchy: Images and King Chulalongkorn Cult
In Chapter 2, we have seen how western visual discourse was employed in the course
of modernization in the Republic of Turkey and Siam. In my analysis, the realistic image
appeared as embodying an abstract concept, a political ideology that conceptualized in a form
of a person (who actually initiated such ideology). Atatürk and King Chulalongkorn, the
beloved, yet authoritarians of their subjects, are both the symbol of particular political
ideologies they were in, namely secularism and monarchism.
The most important component that makes their images so powerful is, in my
opinion, the likeness presence in the images. Definitely, the portrait derives its authority from
the authentic appearance of the noble person it shows. The likeness, the exact replica, helps to
transform the persons into their representation conceivable and believable. In this way, the
holiness of the persons (no matter how much Atatürk identified himself as a ―secularist‖) ties
with their representation. This is the reason why the image not only represents the person as
such, but also is treated like a person. Chapter 2 shows both the image as the method of
making the concept concrete and the transformation of a concept into an image. One can see
that the attitude towards the image / portrait changed from iconophobia to iconophilia, from a
complete absence to omnipresence.
In Chapter 3, I will investigate the use of King Chulalongkorn‘s images in association
with contemporary Thai politics (I will refer to the country as ―Thailand‖ from now on). It is
interesting that his images, thus the king himself, too, suddenly appeared again in society after
he had passed away in 1910. In this chapter, I will discuss the reincarnation of King
Chulalongkorn in the form of a cult that made his images have a significant role and position.
The re-appearance of his images in the 1980s and afterwards, in different forms and ways
from those in the early modern period when he was alive, took place in a specific context of
time and situation concerning the monarchy in the early 1980s. His images serve as a symbol,
as well as an embodiment of particular political ideology acting in the political competition:
Neo-Royalist vs. Democracy. I will explore the use of the images, which, in turn, will give me
an explanation of the complexities of political conflicts among groups in Thai contemporary
society.
The Return of the Monarchy
The coup d‘état of 1932 that had changed Thailand‘s political system from an
absolute monarchy to a democracy and that, consequently, had reduced the power of the
monarchy by placing it under the constitution, took place in the reign of King Prajadhipok
(King Rama VII, r. 1925 – 1935). The members of the coup stagers are some western-
educated, young civilian officials and some military officers. I will skip the complexity of the
political situation after the coup, yet, there is one counter-coup by the royalist to be
mentioned. The almost-successful counter-coup in 1933 was led by Prince Bowordet, one of
the grandsons of King Chulalongkorn. This counter-coup, though not successful, was one of
the causes that urged the government to demolish the power of the monarchy. Mentioned in
Irene Stengs‘ „Worshipping the Great Moderniser, The cult of King Chulalongkorn, patron
saint of the Thai middle class,‟ and also generally known among the Thais who have an
interest in politics, the coup stagers chose Prince Ananda Mahidol, the ten-years-old grandson
of King Chulalongkorn who was living in Switzerland at that time, to be the next king. They
abolished most of the royal ceremonies and festivals connected to the monarchy as well.51
The twenty-one-years-old King Ananda (King Rama VIII, r. 1935 - 1946) returned to
Thailand in 1945, but his reign ended only a year thereafter due to his still-unclarified death.52
Consequently, his younger brother, Prince Bhumibol Adulyadej succeeded to the throne in
1946 at the age of nineteen. Similar to his deceased brother, King Bhumibol (King Rama IX,
r. 1946 - present) returned to Thailand from abroad (1951).
In 1957, as a result of a conflict in the government, the coup operated by Field
Marshall Sarit Thanarat overthrew the government of Field Marshall Pleak Phibunsongkram,
who had attempted to make the monarchy‘s power limited. Sarit, who needed his action
legitimated, started a propaganda campaign promoting the monarchy because the monarchy,
in the public consciousness, was still very much revered. Stengs‘ analysis of the ideology
developed in Sarit‘s regime in relation to the revival of the monarchy‘s power demonstrates
how the monarchy gained back its popularity (indeed, gained more) and its connection with
the figure of King Chulalongkorn that re-emerged in the 1980s. Such ideology, namely ‘พอขน’
(pho khun) that identified the character of the Thai leadership as the fatherly and accessible
leader is rooted in the Sukhothai Kingdom of the 13th century (which was acclaimed as the
first kingdom of Siam) that the kings ruled their subject the way the father does with his
children.53 The concept of pho khun is connected to the concept of the king as the national
ancestor I described in Chapter 2 too.
Before discussing the cult of King Chulalongkorn which emerged in the early 1980s,
it is necessary to mention another phenomenon that took place in Sarit‘s regime, that is, the
fear of the communism.
51
Irene Louise Stengs, Worshipping the Great Moderniser, The cult of King Chulalongkorn, patron
saint of the Thai middle class, Proefschrift Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2003, Amsterdam: Universiteit
van Amsterdam, p. 276.
52 King Ananda was found dead in his bed in the palace, shot through the head.
53 Stengs, p. 278 – 279.
The fear of communism in Thailand is part of the cold-war atmosphere in Southeast
Asia. According to Stengs, the second ideology initiated by Sarit is that of ‘พฒนา’ (phattana,
development) which mainly focused at developing the impoverished areas in several parts of
the country.54 To be more precise, such areas are almost everywhere outside the capital
Bangkok. This fear of communism that Sarit and the monarchy had shared, together with the
phatthana and the pho khun ideologies, were integrated into propaganda campaigns of which
one was the royal visit to the countryside. By the support of Sarit‘s government, King
Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit, sometimes with the Princess Mother traveled around the
country, bringing development (phattana), and thereby giving to the people the image of
persons of benevolence as the national father (pho khun) and mothers.
The revival of the monarchy‘s power and popularity that had started to be promoted
in Sarit‘s regime in 1950s did not end after the death of the Field Marshall in 1963.
Furthermore, those royal visits have been reproduced and manipulated in various forms such
as a documentary on the television, and photographs in calendars distributed every year by
both the state institutions and the private companies. In this way, the image of the monarch,
centering at King Bhumibol, that was constructed in the Thais‘ consciousness, appears as the
benevolent, devoted father for all the people. At the same time, he remains sacred as a semi-
divinity as well as those previous Siamese kings of the Chakri dynasty.
King Chulalongkorn Cult and the Neo-Royalism
Although my research does not focus on the image of King Bhumibol, it is necessary
to mention him because the King Chulalongkorn cult and his images associated with that,
have a special role in the revival of the popularity of the present monarch. What Thongchai
Winichakul, a Thai historian and professor at the Department of History at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, defined as ―neo-royalism,‖ which I will later describe, has a strong
relation with King Chulalongkorn cult.55
While Winichakul did not mention the specific period of the emergence of the cult,
Stengs and the another Thai historian, Nithi Aeusrivongse, remarks that the cult of King
Chulalongkorn emerged in the 1980s when people began to gather at the Royal Plaza where
King Chulalongkorn‘s equestrian is located.56 However, all of them agree that King
Chulalongkorn cult is the cult of the Thai middle class.
54
Stengs, ibid. p. 280 - 281.
55 Winichakul, 2001, p. 56 – 65.
56 Nithi Aeusrivongse, ลทธพธเสดจพอ ร . 5 (The cult of Father King Rama V), 1993, Bangkok: Matichon, p. 45.
and Stengs, p. 1.
The first work on the subject of the cult of King Chulalongkorn is ‗ลทธพธเสดจพอ ร . 5‘
(Lutthi Pithee Sadej Pho Ror Ha, literally, the cult of Father King Rama V) written by
Aeusrivongse in 1993. While Aeusrivongse described the cult as the cult for the middle class
business men,57 Winichakul (2001) and Stengs (2003) developed that idea in connection with
the return of the monarchy and, as a result, the neo-royalist ideology which, spontaneously,
opposes the principle of democracy.
To consider the origin of King Chulalongkorn‘s cult in the line of the history of the
Rattanakosin period and the Chakri dynasty, it makes a lot of sense why the cult appeared in
the 1980s. Stengs marked the three important moments in the 1980s that enabled the
connection and the comparison between the cults of King Chulalongkorn and King
Bhumibol.58 These historical moments of the royal jubilees took place in the years 1982,
1987, and 1988:
1982 The bicentennial of Bangkok as the capital and the two hundred years of rule
by the Chakri dynasty
1987 King Bhumibol turned sixty years old and was honored with the title ‘มหาราช’
(Maharaj, the Great) given to him from forty-million Thai people (through
the
survey operated by the Ministry of Interior).
1988 King Bhumibol broke the record of the longest reign, which was previously
the
reign of his grandfather, King Chulalongkorn.
These three years of royal jubilees and the importance they signified, make my
assumption of the revival of the deceased King Chulalongkorn and the re-emergence of his
images in connection with the propaganda for the living King Bhumibol comprehensible.
Regarding the long-time resistance between the government and the monarchy after the 1932
coup d‘état, the increasing popularity of the king is very much related to contemporary
politics. To be more precise, the king‘s increasing popularity is by itself a political thing.
Aeusrivongse‘s explained that the origin of the cult of King Chulalongkorn grew out of a
feeling of insecurity and frustration towards the politicians (in his term, the ―government‖). 59
In this way, the discourses of ―bad / hopeless politician‖ and of ―politics is bad / hopeless‖
were constructed. At the end, in my opinion, the cult has created the axis between
57
Aeusrivongse, ibid. p. 34.
58 Stengs, p. 298 - 299.
59 Aeusrivongse, p. 34 – 37.
democracy-monarchism. Seen in this light, the popularity of the king transformed into the
political ideology, that is the so-called ―neo-royalism.‖
Nevertheless, I have a slightly different view from Aeusrivongse about this ―bad /
hopeless politician-thus-politics‖ discourse. While Aeusrivongse explained that the cult
happened because Thai people were so frustrated with the politicians, I think it is because
Thai people have been having their consciousness formulated to think so. It is not that the cult
happened because people did not like the politicians, but the people did not like them; they
felt they were the hopeless-greed partly because of the cult. It is precisely the cult that helped
making the people hate them (more).
In this work, Aeusrivongse did not put emphasis on the political ideology, he only
mentioned that King Chulalongkorn is worshipped, as a cult, by the middle class business
men, since this particular group found the politicians, and the government ineffective, thereby
making their business uneasy. He did not go further, at least not explicitly, to analyze how the
hatred towards the politicians and the government is connected with the admiration towards
the king(s) of the Thais. My assumption is that, this democracy-monarchism axis is a part of
the cult. What Aeusrivongse did not mentioned in his work is the fact that the conflict among
the 1932 coup stagers (1950) and the attempt in discrediting them that was later transformed
in the course of the construction of the bad / hopeless politician discourse has undermined the
state of democracy. In this way, the King Chulalongkorn cult rooted in the anti-democracy
ideology— the royalism.60
I will not go deep in terms of political science, or the history of Thai politics.
However, it is important to clarify the formation of the cult and the idea behind it, otherwise
the re-appearance of King Chulalongkorn‘s images started in the 1980s is unexplainable. I
will stop with Aeusrivongse‘ idea of King Chulalongkorn cult at this point (yet, I will return
to him in the last part of this chapter), but will demonstrate the concept of the ―neo-royalism.‖
According to Winichakul, the master narrative of Thai history, or rather, of the royal-
national history is the narrative of the national struggle to secure the national security and
independence under the leadership of the king.61
In Winichakul‘s analysis, this narrative structures the Thai official historiography. It
is a collection of the same kinds of events (the threats from the foreigners that were handled
60
I conceptualized my assumption above from the discussion took place between December 11th – 12
th 2008
in sameskybooks web board, the Thai political web board (I skip the long and complicated courses of
historical events in the Thai politics in this thesis). I thank you Somsak Jeamteerasakul in particular. Note:
Somsak Jeamteerasakul is the expert on the Thai monarchy, and the lecturer at the Department of History at
Thammasart University, Thailand.
http://sameskybooks.org/board/index.php?showtopic=18052&hl=
61 Winichakul, 2001, p. 57 – 58.
by the kings) that took place in different periods and places within the today-territory of
Thailand. Moreover, he remarked that this narrative is the key of the formation of Thai
nationalism. In this perspective, the two ideologies― nationalism and royalism― become
one, as in Winichakul‘s terms, ―royal-nationalism.‖
As the core of this master narrative is the ―struggle against the foreign protagonist,‖
King Chulalongkorn‘s against western colonial powers fits well with such narrative. To put it
another way, the narrative of King Chulalongkorn‘s securing the country is grounded in this
master narrative. The collective memory of the Thais about the nation-state is, hence,
centered on the royalty, thereby making their nationalistic sentiment indistinguishable from
royalism. According to Winichakul, the ―neo-royalism‖ ideology evoked partly by the royal-
national history and the cult of King Chulalongkorn. He stated that the royal-national history,
which was invented after the power of the monarchy had been declined after its peak in the
reign of King Chulalongkorn, is an attempt in maintaining the monarchy‘s status. After the
1932 coup d‘état, this style of historiography did not change. As a result, the royalist ideology
survived, and returned in the reign of King Bhumibol as ―neo-royalism.‖ The cult of the
fathers, of Father King Chulalongkorn in particular, was part of the formation of neo-
royalism, bringing back the past kings to the present.62
Winichakul remarked that the cult reflects the attitude of the Siamese towards their
kings. The cult, first, is the return of the past, constructing the memory of a pillar of the neo-
royalist ideology in remembrance of the Populist King (regarding the title ―Phra Piya
Maharaj,‖ the Great Beloved King). Second, in its turn, this cult is the metaphorical
representative of the present-day ideology of neo-royalism. Neo-royalism is the political
ideology that characterized the king as the ―Populist King‖ by using the cult of remembrance
that, in turn, has made the present king popular too.63 The collective, public memory towards
their beloved-deceased king has re-established the reverence in the present monarch. They are
the persons of faith to be worshipped and having hope for a last refuge in the political turmoil.
Within this perspective, the emergence of the King Chulalongkorn cult in the 1980s
is, in my opinion, far more significant and complicated than simply being the cult of the
business men for the business‘ sake. The business prosperity that the cult worshippers wish
for is just one of the aspects of the whole thing in the cult of King Chulalongkorn.
Furthermore, this business wish is actually grounded, as well as functioning, in the
construction of the axis of democracy-monarchism that has materialized the two, opposing
ideologies into the form of one person— the politician vs. the king. In this way, the politician
62
Winichakul, 2001, ibid. p. 62 – 63.
63 Winichakul, 2001, ibid. p. 64.
and the king became the dichotomy, and, apparently, the monarch has won this political
competition.
While I stated that the increase of the monarchy‘s popularity in the present reign
marked the victory of monarchism over democracy, it does not mean that the Thai political
system changed from democracy back to monarchism. This phenomenon is, as I would like to
define, a ―crypto-monarchism,‖ meaning that the monarch, King Bhumibol, is capable to
intervene in politics (as he actually did for several times), despite the fact that, by the
constitutional law, he is legally incapable to do so.
Let me clarify this point a little bit more. According to the constitutional law, the king
is ―beyond politics,‖ meaning that he has neither right nor power to do anything concerning
politics (and any business of the country). But what made the principle of the constitutional
monarchy problematic is due to another law: the lèse majesté, the law that protects the
reigning monarch from any offenses or criticism. These two laws function together in
constructing the discourse of ―the King is beyond politics‖ while paradoxically they make his
actions beyond any questions. To put it another way: King Bhumibol has is power but not the
accountability, he is capable to do anything, including intervening in politics without any
scrutiny. This characteristic is in conflict with the democratic principle, whereas the country
is still identified as a democratic state.
Furthermore, the king‘s intervention in politics is acceptable among the Thais. It is
interesting that Thai people consider it not as an intervention, but as the solution that solves
problems in any political turmoil. Ironically enough, these are the very same people that
strongly believe that the king is beyond politics. This is the paradox of the contemporary Thai
politics that illustrates what I called ―crypto-monarchism,‖ a monarchist mentality in a
democratic state. King Bhumibol is the true-righteous ruler of Thailand.
I would like to note that, in the coronation ceremony, there is a customarily dialogue
between the king and the Brahmins. This dialogue is for the king to declare his position and
the mission as the king, the ruler of the kingdom. In the coronation ceremony, the Brahmins
would ask the king (in Thai and in Pali):
"ขอไดทรงราชภาระด ารงราชสมบตโดยธรรมสม าเสมอเพอประโยชนเกอกลและสขแหงมหาชน สบไป”
(―May Your Majesty take upon Yourself the business of government, and, for the
good and happiness of the populace, reign in righteousness!")
The king would reply:
"ดกรพราหมณ บดนเราทรงราชภาระครองแผนดนโดยธรรมสม าเสมอ เพอประโยชนเกอกลและสขแหงมหาชน…”
("Brahmins, now that I have assumed the full responsibility of government, I shall
reign in righteousness for the good wealth of the populace. . .") (Jeamteerasakul underlined) 64
Such declaration is legitimate in an absolute monarchy system, where the king takes
the full responsibility in the country‘s administration. But it is completely illegitimate and
senseless in a democratic system because such duty belongs to the government. The fact that
King Bhumibol‘s reply in the his coronation ceremony in 1946, which was re-translated as
“เราจะครองแผนดนโดยธรรม เพอประโยชนสขแหงมหาชนชาวสยาม” (the meaning is the same as in the English
version I quoted and underlined above) is still in the public mind proved ―the righteous ruler
who assumed the full responsibility of the government,‖ is the king, just like those past kings
in an absolute monarchy system. King Bhumibol is the true national leader, the (head of)
government of Thailand. This concept of the righteous ruler was naturalized in the Thai
consciousness, while it is indeed in conflict with the principle of democracy.
To conclude this part, I would like to say that; first, the early 1980s of Thailand was
the period when the monarchy started gaining back the popularity after the country had
changed its political system from an absolute monarchy to a democracy in 1932. Secondly,
King Chulalongkorn‘s cult that emerged in the same period is a part of this restoration project
of the monarchy‘s popularity. In this respect, the emergence of the deceased king and his
images marks the reincarnation, the revival of the political ideology that king had believed in,
and he became an embodiment of. This revival operation did not occur alone, but occurred
within the context of the political situation. King Chulalongkorn was politicized, and was to
become a political instrument. Therefore, the presence of his images in cults is first and
foremost a matter of politics.
In the following part, I will investigate how King Chulalongkorn‘s images
functioned to empower the present king, King Bhumibol.
The Two Great Kings: King Chulalongkorn’s image and the Empowering of King
Bhumibol
In the previous parts I laid the foundation of how the cult functioned in supporting the
revival of the monarchy project, the concept of neo-royalism, and the ironic political
64
For both the Thai and the English translation of the original Pali texts, I would like to thank you Somsak
Jeamteerasakul who kindly provided me the texts from Prince Thaniwiwat‘s „The Coronation of His Majesty
Prajadhipok, King of Siam‟ (1925). His remarks on the coronation ceremonies before and after the 1932
coup d‘état are also valuable. All the conversation on this topic took place between December 10th – 11
th
2008 in http://www.sameskybooks.org/board/index.php?showtopic=17868&hl=
phenomenon I called a crypto-monarchism in the reign of King Bhumibol. Now I will
illustrate how the images of King Chulalongkorn appeared and functioned in constructing the
power of the present King, making this so-called ―crypto-monarchism‖ possible.
The extensive portraiture of King Chulalongkorn helped constructing the revival of
him in a form of a cult in the present time. Those portraits, especially the photographs
produced during his life-time became an important element in making the deceased king
present again among the living. To put it another way, it is the images that bring the dead
back to life; through the presence of images, King Chulalongkorn continues to live in the
memory of the Thais.
As I mentioned earlier that King Chulalongkorn and King Bhumibol are the two
kings having the longest reigns in the history of the Chakri dynasty, therefore of Siam and the
nation-state Thailand, comparing them together became the best device in bringing back the
monarchy‘s popularity. Regarding the characteristic of King Chulalongkorn as the absolute
authoritarian in the political system, namely monarchism, nobody else could be better than
him in representing, and being used as the most potent symbol of the absolute monarchy.
Furthermore, the strong image of King Chulalongkorn as great father-ruler also enables him
to be the perfect symbol, the icon in this revival project— the old ruler strikes back. The
restoration of the monarchy‘s authority and popularity lies in these selected meanings of his
charismatic images that were manipulated, reproduced, used, and distributed in the society.
Due to the royal jubilees I described earlier, the comparison between King
Chulalongkorn and King Bhumibol began in the late 1980s. As for the year 1988, in which
King Bhumibol‘s sixtieth birthday and the celebration for the longest reign took place, Stengs
referred to the book ‘สองมหาราชนกพฒนา’ (song maharaj nak phattana, Two Great Development
Kings) published that year that addressed most achievements of the two kings; its cover
picture shows a composition of their portraits. According to her interpretation on the
composition of the picture, the spirit of King Chulalongkorn (in the sepia color that identified
him as the past) is watching over his grandchild, King Bhumibol, who was placed in the front
and dressed in a white uniform with golden decorations. In this context, Stengs also related
the spirit of King Chulalongkorn to the concept of Phra Syama Devadhiraj, the spirit of
royal-national protector. 65
She also mentioned that the same composition was founded in one of the triumphal
aches erected for the celebration on Ratchadamnoen Avenue in Bangkok, as well as in the
media, such as newspapers, magazines, and television broadcasts and other objects including
coins, medallions, statuettes, greeting cards, stickers, and posters (Fig. 28) King
Chulalongkorn keeps appearing in sepia, as to distinct him from the present time, for
65
Stengs, p. 300.
example, in the new year greeting card that shows a large portrait of the past king as a
background for the smaller, colored figure of the present King Bhumibol (Fig. 29).66 King
Bhumibol, standing in the rice field, holds a sickle in his right hand, giving him the image of
the accessible for all classes including the peasants, and at the same time, of the national
father of the agricultural country Thailand.
Steng‘s interpretation of the spirit of King Chulalongkorn (in the form of a sepia-
colored figure) coheres with Peter A. Jackson‘s remark on the message “King Rama 5 and 9
live on among their subjects,” regardless the grammartical incorrectness imprinted in that
greeting card (the message is not visible in the picture I use). In „Royal spirits, Chinese gods,
and magic monks: Thailand‟s boom-time religions of prosperity,‟ Jackson notes that this
greeting card represents the connection between King Chulalongkorn as the spirit of the land,
in both a metaphorical and a literal sense, and the living King Bhumibol as the strength of the
land (in Sanskrit, Bhumi = land, Bala = strength).67 To connect the idea of the land with the
nation, as the land, the territory is the objectivity of the abstract idea of the nation, to be the
―father of the land,‖ in terms of the spirit and / or the strength is to be the ―father of the
nation,‖ too. Being the national fathers, both kings also live under the discourse of ―the
devotional popularist king,‖ given love and loyalty by their childlike subjects.
The last example of the ―merged image‖ of King Chulalongkorn and King Bhumibol
I will put in this part is the banknote. There are three versions of the banknote; one of them
shows the image of King Chulalongkorn on one side and King Bhumibol on the other side
(Fig. 30), while the other two posit them together (Fig 31, 32).
In the first banknote (Fig. 30), King Chulalongkorn, as Phra Piya Maharaj (the Great
Beloved King) is depicted as standing on the pedestal among his grateful subjects, while the
other picture of him in the foreground shows the full royal attire with the detail of
decorations. The other side of the banknote shows the face of King Bhumibol.
The same image of King Bhumibol is used in the second version of the banknote
(Fig. 31), of which its other side displays King Chulalongkorn sitting on the throne with his
grandchild standing beside him. It is remarkable that in both versions, King Chulalongkorn
slightly turns his head and thereby his eyes are looking towards the space on the left of the
banknotes. As the modernizer of Thailand, his gaze signifies the concept of the modern, the
progress towards the civilized future. In a different manner, King Bhumibol makes eye
66
Stengs, ibid. p. 301.
67 Peter A. Jackson, “Royal spirits, Chinese gods, and magic monks: Thailand‟s boom-time religions of
prosperity,” South East Asia Research, 7, 3 (November 1999), p. 303 – 304, cited in Surakarn
Toesomboon, p. 174.
contact with the banknote user. His gaze looks out of the banknote, to the space of the people
in reality.
In the last version (Fig. 32), King Chulalongkorn was placed behind King Bhumibol,
but both of them are looking towards the space on the left. This position gives the same sense
as in King Chulalongkorn‘s images in the other two versions— the sense of modernity,
looking towards the future.
Through all these images, King Bhumibol established his power and authority by
comparing himself with King Chulalongkorn the Great. To consider the revival of the
popularity of the monarchy in the present reign, the King Chulalongkorn cult functions as a
political cult. It makes the image of the monarchy, as opposed to that of the politicians, the
last and the only pillar of political stability of Thailand. Images play a significant role in this
monarchy revival project. Firstly, images bring back the deceased king to life. Although he
passed away since 1910, King Chulalongkorn does not completely die from the Thai
consciousness. As transformed into another kind of presence— as images— King
Chulalongkorn can be seen everywhere both in the private or public space.
Secondly, while making the deceased king reincarnated in the public remembrance,
images visualized his being too. Since one of the most eminent characteristics of King
Chulalongkorn is that of the absolute ruler in monarchism, he, precisely his images, is an
embodiment of such characteristic. In other words, images make the abstract political
ideology, monarchism concrete by personifying it in the figure of King Chulalongkorn.
Thirdly, images make the comparison of the two kings from different times and
spaces possible; by placing them together, they are seen (as if they really were) together.
Images made a link between them. The living king was empowered by the deceased king, as
if he was blessed by the supernatural power of his ancestor. This magical aspect of the image,
in this case, was used for a political purpose. As images of the deceased king became a
symbol of the ideology of monarchism, the use of his images is therefore an attempt to re-
establish the power and the authority of the reigning monarch, which was also personified and
symbolized in the figure of King Bhumibol in the course of contemporary political
competition.
In this way, an omnipresence of the two kings does not only make them, the semi-
divine noble, visible and accessible, but also spread their power to the mass. In the course of
the image reproduction, manipulation, and distribution in modern society, the charisma of the
model of the image, or, an ―aura‖ in Walter Benjamin‘s terms does not decline, nor does it
disappear due to the change from an unreachable divinity to a reachable one.68 On the
68
In Benjamin‘s perspective, what he called an ―aura‖ is the magical, ritual aspect that that contains in the
uniqueness of an image in an artwork declines in the course of the media production. Once reproduced and
contrary, an ―aura,‖ a magical aspect that is rooted in religious belief and a charisma, or a
power of the model that has been integrated in the images itself, spreads over to the wider
area of the public, emphasizing the power of the model of that image in the public mind.
The integration between the image and its model (the king; the semi-divinity on
earth), through the likeness the image presents, makes the image sacred in itself. The king‘s
image became an object for worship, to be given respect and loyalty, as the people would do
for the king himself. Through this successful project of the revival of the monarchy, the
images of the two great kings turned the political-national symbol, the true father-ruler of
Thailand to one Thai people are ready to die for. This monarchist mentality was partly evoked
from King Chulalongkorn‘s cult that motivates the nationalistic sentiment of the Thais.
Interestingly, after a while, King Bhumibol‘s image became powerful enough to be
independent from his grandfather. The images of the living king became symbols that are
capable to stand alone; they have no need to rely on the images of the deceased king any
longer. Instead of having a picture of any coup stagers or a politician hanging on the wall,
Thai people put the picture of King Bhumibol in their houses, in their offices, and in the
public space. Meanwhile, the King Chulalongkorn cult turned more and more magical. His
images became an object for a vow, and have been worshipped especially by the middle class.
Worshipping King Chulalongkorn’s Images: Irony, or a Form of local Modernity?
The other face of King Chulalongkorn‘s images is that of the magical one. As I
mentioned earlier that the King Chulalongkorn cult is the phenomenon that shows that the
Thai middle class puts their hopes on the dead king, an attempt in communicating with the
dead, expresses the mystical, the supernatural aspect of the cult, as well as the attitude
towards the modern king. This particular aspect transformed King Chulalongkorn from an
important king to a powerful spirit, a divine being. What does this phenomenon signify?
Instead of being in conflict with animism, why does the ―modern‖ king fit well with this
―traditional‖ belief? In this part, I will examine King Chulalongkorn‘s images and the ritual
around them in search for an explanation of this paradoxical phenomenon. Within the realm
of the cult, his images are both an amulet and a sacred object for a vow. As a cult, King
Chulalongkorn protects those who believe in him personality cult, the; at the same time, he
fulfills the favor of his believers who, in turn, give thanks to him.
Now let me return to Aeusrivongse‘s analysis of the King Chulalongkorn cult. He
remarks that, as a real characters and achievements of the person were brought in,
approachable from the mass, it will lose a uniqueness, an authenticity, and a ritual value that lies in its
distance. See Benjamin, p. 251 - 283.
reinterpreted, and magnified to the stage of reverence.69 In this respect, some of these realities
were selected; the discourses concerning King Chulalongkorn which were involved in this
spiritual aspect of the cult, are that of the ―civilized‖ and the ―fatherly ruler.‖ Aeusrivongse
explained that the cult worshippers are those who feel insecure towards the administration of
the government, mainly one that engaged with the economics and business. These people
turned to the glorious past, which is the period of King Chulalongkorn, the ―fatherly ruler‖
who had made the country ―civilized.‖70 They placed his images in their shops, restaurants,
and offices because they believe that he will help their business ‚ท ามาคาขน‛ (tum ma kha
kheoun, literally means ―prosperous‖).
King Chulalongkorn is an accessible fatherly king, at the same time, a divine spirit,
capable of making wishes come true. The way the cult worshippers called him, ‚เสดจพอ‛
(father), proves the intense relationship, the father-child relationship, between them and the
deceased king.71
The notion of an accessible father made the Royal Plaza an all-time accessible
cathedral for the public, where the statue of the king is the center of worship (Fig. 33).72 As a
personality cult, worshipping King Chulalongkorn is ground in the knowledge about him (his
autobiography and favorites). Tuesday is the most important day of the cult because the king
was born on Tuesday, and many believe that every Tuesday night, at 10 pm, the spirit of the
king descends from heaven to enter the statue.73 The votive offerings that people bring to him
are (among other Thai traditional votive offerings found in other cults, such as garlands,
incense, fresh coconut, and Thai sweets) bunches of red or pink roses, brandies, and cigars,
because they believe that these are the king‘s favorites. These offerings reflect that the king‘s
taste is a mixture of Western and Thai delicacies.74
Moreover, this character of the cult is the perfect example of the relationship between
an image and a beholder which shows that people respond to images the way they may do to a
69
Yet, the source of knowledge of the personality, characteristic, and achievement of the person (in other
words, the myths around the person) relies on the historical narrative of that person. The general body of
knowledge on King Chulalongkorn is the history told mainly through an educational system; a school history
curriculum, which, consequently, became a collective memory about him. Historiography is, as I already
said, a method of constructing reality, which will become a memory.
70 In Siam and Thailand respectively, the notion of the ―civilized (ความเจรญ )‖ is the same as that of the
―progress (ความกาวหนา),‛ and the ―modern (ความทนสมย, ความเปนสมยใหม).‛ See Winichakul, 2000, p. 528- 549.
71 Aeusrivongse, p. 12-13, 17, and 32-34.
72 Aeusrivongse, ibid. p. 37. Stengs, p. 102.
73 Stengs, ibid. p. 103.
74 Stengs, ibid. p. 1.
real person (a model of an image). Freedburg makes an interesting observation on how the
perception of an image as a representation changes to a presentation. He explains that what is
represented becomes full present, indeed, representation is subsumed by presence. Therefore,
the object slightly changes from ―it‖ to ―him/her‖; the sign has become a living embodiment
of what it signifies.75 His explanation gives a comprehensive reason why images come to be
not only respected, but also treated as if they were real persons. However, to take Freedburg‘s
analysis to our case, I should further note that, because King Chulalongkorn is dead, the
response towards his images is not as if to the real, living noble person, but to the divine spirit
of that noble person.
Visiting the Royal Plaza is not only to ask for help and to offer him votive offerings
once a wish is fulfilled, but also to perform a consecration rite. In this perspective, the king
appears fully as the divine spirit, the deity that can transform an ordinary object into a sacred
one. The objects, yet, must be something that are related to him in some ways. Significantly,
objects that most of the worshippers bring to a ritual initiation on Tuesday night are coins that
have his portraits imprinted, especially the coins that were produced in his reign (Fig. 34).76
After having been sacralized, these coins became amulets; they protect the bearer from harm.
Stengs gave one example of the miracle of the coin; in 1992 the Thai movie star Bin Banlerit
declared that he had survived a car accident because of the protective power of the original
King Chulalongkorn coin he wore as an amulet.77 In the same manner, pictures and
photographs of the king are consecralized; these images are given as gifts, placed at home, or
made as an amulet locket (Fig. 35).
From the examples I cited above, it is apparent that the king‘s portrait imagery
acquires the aura of the noble person, of whom it was previously taboo to represent.
Furthermore, because that noble person is dead, his image is not only divine, but also
spiritual― a divine spirit.
Since King Chulalongkorn as a divine spirit became a popular concept, worshipping
him is in conflict with his identity as the modern king, the modernizer. Yet, his identity as the
modern king that is grounded in the discourses of the ―civilized‖ and ―progress‖ discourses
are indistinguishable; because they are the reasons, the purpose, and the wish in progress and
prosperity the worshippers wish for. King Chulalongkorn cult, demonstrates that the Siamese
/ Thai concept of power and supernatural qualities of a Buddhist king transformed the
deceased king into a powerful spirit, who is capable of making a wish come true, regardless
75
Freedburg, p. 27 – 28.
76 Aeusrivongse, p. 17.
77 Stengs further noted that after Bin told his story to the media, the number of people worshipping the king
at the equestrian statue increased. Stengs, p. 103.
of the Western-modern aspects of the king when he was alive. It is probably impossible to
distinguish the traditional belief in animism from the modernist discourse (in terms of western
rationalism) in the case of modernity in non-Euro-American cultures.
While seeming to be an ironic form of modernity, it can be seen as a localized one as
well. The realistic approach in western image-making was incorporated in the previous
Buddhist-animist discourse and, finally, appeared in a mystic realm. King Chulalongkorn, in
the form of a cult, has his afterlife in the today popular imagery of the Thais through the
visualization, the various forms of modern media reproduction, and the objects on which his
images were imprinted. These images prove that traditional belief and religion survive in
today‘s society. In this way, tradition and modernity, no matter how strange it may seem, runs
parallel in contemporary Thailand.
Chapter 4 The Revival of the Dead: Images of Atatürk in Turkey’s Contemporary
Politics
After Atatürk closed his eyes at 9.05 A.M. on the 10th November 1938 at Dolmabahçe
palace in Istanbul, he never really died from the Turkish citizens. From then on, every year at
the same day and the same time, the sirens will be heard all over the country to commemorate
the national moment of grief. People still remember, talk about, and miss him, children also
learn about him from their lessons in primary school.78 Yet, the intensive appearance of
Atatürk‘s images in the mid 1990s is not simply a continuous practice of commemorating the
national ancestor. Esra Özyürek remarked that Turkish politicians and intellectuals described
the recent interest in Atatürk in the mid 1990s as a kind of resurrection (yeniden diriliş) or an
awakening (uyanış).79 Why did this phenomenon occur in the mid 1990s? What made an
already-ubiquitous images of the national ancestor increasingly appear at a specific moment?
Chapter 4 will investigate the re-emergence, the new representation, and the use of
Atatürk‘s images in the context of the political competition among groups in Turkey‘s
contemporary politics. The mid 1990s is a transitional moment of Turkey when the secularist
hegemony was challenged from the Islamist through the rise of political Islam. Yael Navaro-
Yashin, one of the scholars on Turkish subjects wrote that the political context in the mid
1990s and the context of what was called the ―politics of identity‖ amongst secularists and
Islamists are the factors of the deployment of the image of Atatürk. The figure of Atatürk was
widely used and reproduced by self-declared Ataturkists.80 The images of Atatürk were
employed in the production of posters, badges, portraits, photographs, busts, statues, and
statuettes. These items were extensively distributed and circulated in public and private
secularist venues as well as at demonstrations.
In her analysis, Navaro-Yashin remarked that the efforts to inscribe a lasting presence
for
―Atatürk‘s Turkey‖ arose in the middle of the 1990s out of anxiety over the possible
disintegration of Turkey as a result of attacks from Kurdish and Islamist movements.81 This
phenomenon evoked the use of Atatürk‘s images as a form of resistance to both the political
Islam and the Kurdish minority. In this perspective, the emergence of images of the deceased
78
Nazlı Ökten, “An Endless Death and an Eternal Mourning. November 10 in Turkey,” in Esra Özyürek
(ed.), The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey, 2007: Syracuse University Press, p. 95.
79 Özyürek, p. 96.
80 Navaro-Yashin, p. 188. In this chapter, I will use the term ―Kemalism,‖ when I refer to the ideology, while
the term ―Atatürkist‖ will be used while speaking about the people. The terms ―Atatürkism (Atatürkçülük),‖
as explained by Ökten, is a renamed version of ―Kemalism.‖ See Ökten, footnote 2, ibid, p. 96.
81 Navaro-Yashin, ibid, p. 196.
Atatürk is the reincarnation of the national ancestor, of the founder of the republic, as well as
of the political ideology he had initiated (secularism). Yet, it is not only that those who
claimed themselves as ―Atatürkist‖ that employ his images in declaring their political
statement, in the late 1990s, the Islamic Party began to appropriate the images of Atatürk
too.82
This revival operation did not occur alone, but was in reaction with the political
situation. There has been a war of symbols going on in Turkey. This chapter will investigate
how an Atatürkist and an Islamist give meaning to the deceased national ancestor, re-
construct and contend the memory about him. In so doing, they attempt to legitimate their
ideologies as tied with his principle (as they believe theirs is ―genuine‖), and thereby use his
images as their symbols against the others.
Atatürk of the Atatürkists
Kemalism has been an official ideology of the Turkish republic since the 1930s, and
an image of Atatürk has been the symbol of such ideology since then. As I mentioned in
chapter 2, Atatürk‘s statues and monuments were erect everywhere in Turkey as a mark of the
new secular republic in the old, Islamic Ottoman land. ―Punctuating space,‖ highlighting a
specific landscape plays a significant role again when Kemalism was challenged by Political
Islam in the mid 1990s.
In 1994, while people joined forces to organize all sorts of Atatürk‘s events, the week
of November 10 was officially organized as ―Atatürk‘s week‖ (Atatürk Haftası) in memory of
the death of the nation‘s founder. President Demirel erected Atatürk statues into four new
schools in Ankara, including the one in the neighborhood of Sincan, which is densely
populated by Islamists. Atatürk statues were erected in the main school courtyards. In his
speeches on this occasion, President Demirel declared that ―15 millions of young Turkish
people are taking charge of Atatürk with love‖ and that ―the statue of Atatürk is a symbol of
love.‖83 The erecting of Atatürk statues was the central defining activity of the Atatürk Week
events.
Another example of an act of punctuating space took place in 1996. An officer of the
Turkish military (an adamant secularist institution) ordered the erection of a statue of Atatürk
in a local square in Sultanbeyli, one of the districts of Istanbul, whose inhabitants had voted
predominantly for the Islamist political party, the Refah Party. Çinar Alev points out that the
placement of Atatürk‘s statue emphasizes an authority of secular nationalism in an
Islamicized district. It was an attempt to re-establish the power and authority of secularism as
82
See Ökten, p. 96 - 113 and Özyürek, p. 151 – 177.
83 Cumhuriyet, November 14, 1994, p. 15, cited in Navaro-Yashin, p. 196.
an uncontestable norm and defining mark of the nation.84 The iconic figure of Atatürk has
become the most potent symbol of official nationalist ideology, not only for the state, but also
for contending ideologies. As all of these punctuating spaces are in a public sphere (it is a
matter for the public indeed), they provide contour to landscapes, socializing them and
saturating them with specific political value, that is, secular value.
Let me come back to İnci sculpture studio I mentioned in chapter 1. The molds in
İnci‘s studio shop had lived through almost all of Turkey‘s republican history, and statues had
been produced in an artisan way to be funded mostly by institutions of the state, until the
Islamic Welfare Party took hold of Istanbul‘s municipalities in 1994. Necati İnci, the second
generation of the studio, said that ―Welfarists are not erecting statues of Atatürk in every
public site as the old municipalities used to.‖85 Yet, what is interesting is his remark that there
has been increased interest from the private sector. More and more Atatürkist organizations
and secular-mined owners of companies and shops were demanding Atatürk statues (Fig. 36).
This phenomenon shows that the demand for Atatürk busts and statues, together with
other objectified forms of portraits, posters, and badges that grew in the mid-1990s, is more
widespread among members of society. It is not just a matter of the state anymore, but also of
the private sectors, who identified themselves as ―secularist,‖ thereby as ―Atatürkist.‖ People
decorate their physical surroundings with images of Atatürk. There were various styles of
posters, framed portraits, postcards, and pictures of Atatürk to be found in the market.
Navaro-Yashin mentioned one popular image of Atatürk. In this picture, he wore a white shirt
and black suit-and-tie, looking up to the sky, and therefore to ―progress‖ (Fig. 37).86 On
special occasions such as Republic Day (October 29) and Atatürk‘s death (November 10),
mainstream secular newspapers such as Sabah, Hürriyet, and Milliyet will distribute free
posters of Atatürk to their readers.
Not only formal-looking images that Turkish people want to have, but also new
representation of Atatürk appear during this period. Since the foundation of the republic, until
then, an official representation of Atatürk displays him as a serious man in either a military
uniform or in stylish, western civilian attire. Özyürek stated that in the late 1990s, some
painters and sculptors began to depict Atatürk the way it never existed during his life time: a
smiling Atatürk.87 New representations of Atatürk can also be found in photographs. Atatürk‘s
newly popular photographs are ones that depict him in a leisure activities, especially these
show him smiling (Fig. 38). These kinds of appearance desacralize him, and make a closer
relationship to him. In her analysis on the images of the deceased leader and the role of
84
Çinar Alev, p. 100-101.
85 Navaro-Yashin, p. 89.
86 Navaro-Yashin, ibid. p. 86.
87 Özyürek, p. 111.
nostalgia in the political transitional period, Özyürek further pointed out that the non-official
representation of Atatürk‘s photographs portrays the happiness of the past (1930s).88 In this
respect, I think that it is a reconstruction of the memory. Images of the deceased Atatürk
doing pleasurable activities signify the happiness of the time when he was alive, the happy
past. The change because of the rise of Islam creates not only anxiety, but also nostalgia, the
wish for past time happiness― the good, old days.
At the height of the conflict with Islamists, Atatürk paraphernalia were put on the
market. In 1994, after the victory of the Welfare Party in the election in municipalities, one
could find all sorts of things on the market with Atatürk‘s figure on them. Whereas the veil is
a symbol of Islam, the Atatürkists attached pins of Atatürk on their coats, sweaters, or blouses
as brooches. Atatürkist women and men began to wear these pins to be visibly distinguishable
from Islamists. There were silver-colored pins with Atatürk‘s portrait as well as gold-coated
ones. Wearing Atatürk paraphernalia became quite widespread in society as reaction to the
Welfare Party. School teachers, working women, businesswomen and men wore Atatürk pins,
semiotically defending their lifestyle against the one professed and practiced by veiled
Islamist women.89
In an interview with her mother, Esra Özyürek also pointed out that her mother
started having Atatürk‘s pin on her clothes after the Islamic Party won the local election in
Istanbul in 1994. ―When I am walking on the street, I want to show that there are people who
are dedicated to Atatürk‘s principles. Look, now there are veiled women walking around even
in this neighborhood {she lives in Erenköy, a secular neighborhood in Istanbul}. I put my
chest forward to show them my pin as I pass by them. I have my Atatürk against their veils.‖90
In this way, Atatürk became a central symbol in contemporary politics of identity.
People identify themselves as Atatürkists, at the same time they make their political statement
as secularist outwards by having Atatürk‘s images with them, in their offices, houses, and on
their bodies. Atatürk‘s images became a tool, a political symbol of secularism against Islam in
the political transit of the 1994. All activities around Atatürk‘s image, and the large quantity
of reproduction of his images in various forms led to criticism from the Islam. The Islamist
Yeni Şafak newspaper likened the cult around Atatürk statues with ―idolatry‖ (putçuluk),
while the other newspaper Akit declared that ―statues do not fill hungry stomachs.‖91
Before I finish this part, I would like to cite one interesting example of how people
used Atatürk‘s image, which fits with the Islamist‘s critique of putçuluk. In 1997, the
88
Özyürek, ibid. p. 113 – 115.
89 Navaro-Yashin, p. 89.
90 Özyürek, p. 99.
91 Yeni Şafak, November 11, 1996 and Akit, November 11, 1996. Cited in Navaro-Yashin, p. 197.
government abolished the religious schools (İmam Hatip) which were the centers that had
produced Islamist activists and intellectuals. In reaction to that, the Islamists organized a
public demonstration in Ankara to argue for their democratic right to choose the education of
their children. When the demonstrators were marching, there was a young woman who
suddenly took a portrait of Atatürk out from her handbag, and showed it to a demonstrator. In
Navaro-Yashin‘s analysis of this event, she stated that the act of the young woman, Chantal
Zakari, was as a religious act of holding a cross to stop the devil.92 Images of Atatürk, at a
certain point, became just like an amulet at the moment of confrontation. In this respect,
Atatürk is a cult figure that is used as a statement against Islam. Furthermore, the Atatürkists,
by decorating their places with his images and having his face attached to their bodies,
alienate the Islamists from the concept of the good Turkish citizen. Those who declare
themselves as Atatürkists see themselves as the true descendants of Atatürk, the guardians of
his republican principles, of which one of the aims is to distinguish religion from politics.
Turkish nationalism and secularism are closely bound connected.
Atatürk of the Islamists
In the previous part, I showed how the secular government and the people who
declare their political position as Atatürkists, employ Atatürk‘s images in their reaction
against Political Islam. In this part, I will demonstrate how the Islamists use images of this
beloved-deceased leader in arguing with the first group. Whereas some Islamists criticized the
frenzy of Atatürk‘s image‘s reproduction and distribution as putçuluk, in 1998, some of them,
including the Welfare Islamist Party began to strike back the Atatürkists with Atatürk‘s
images that are related to Islam.93
Regarding the fact that Islam prohibits image-making, Islamist appropriation of
Atatürk‘s images is very extraordinary as well as very new. Until now, there are not so many
scholars who studied this issue, but among them are Nazlı Ökten and Esra Özyürek, whom I
will mainly refer to in this part. As it is a very special act of Islam, I would like to
demonstrate that Islamist‘s appropriation of Atatürk‘s images is a pure political matter.
After the rise to power in 1994 and the greatest number of votes they got in the 1995
election, the Islamist Welfare Party was closed down in 1997. The constitutional court banned
the Welfare Party by accusing their works in conflict with the republic‘s principle of
secularism. This incidence created a reaction from the Islamists, especially from the Virtue
92
Navaro-Yashin, ibid. p. 190.
93 Yet, the first group, one that regards Atatürk as an enemy of Islam is much bigger. The second group, one
that believes that Atatürk is a savior of Muslim nation, is both smaller and newer than the other one. The
second group seeks for the way to connect Atatürk with Islam. See more detail in Ökten, p. 95 – 113.
Party that came to replace the Welfare Party and the Islamists newspaper such as Akit and
Milli Gazete. Özyürek pointed out that they attempt to challenge ―the foundational myths of
the Turkish Republic‖ and to legitimate their ideology and actions by retrieving the memory
of the founding moment of the republic and inscribing themselves with it.94
To give an example of what I described above, I will talk about the cover of the
Islamist newspaper Akit.
On the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Turkish Republic (29th
October, 1998), Akit published a photograph of Atatürk that no one has ever seen before in
any official media (Fig. 39). This particular photograph was taken in the public declaration of
the republic on the 29th October, 1923. In this photograph, Atatürk was standing on the
balcony of the National Assembly building in Ankara, having the religious leader with a
white turban standing beside him. All of them were praying as we can see from their gestures
(their palms turned upward at the chest level).
It is not only this photograph of Atatürk in a religious manner that is striking, but also
the way the editor composed the entire cover page. Below the photograph of Atatürk, there is
a photograph of a policewoman covering the mouth of a veiled university student. That
photograph was taken during the nationwide protests on university campuses organized by
veiled university students after they had been informed that they would not be allowed to
register in the universities if they still cover their heads with veils.95 The headline located
above Atatürk‘s picture reads, ―It Started Like This‖ (Böyle Basladi), whereas another one
beside the veiled student reads, ―And It Became Like That‖ (Ve Böyle Oldu).96 By positioning
these two pictures together, Akit criticized the present secular government that their action
was actually against Atatürk‘s founding principle. By doing so, Akit reminded the forgotten
history, that Atatürk and religious leaders were alliances at the beginning of the republic.97
Moreover, the pictures proved that the secular republic means not emancipation for Turkish
people, but oppression, and limitation of choices for both the body and the education for the
Turks.
The other example that shows Atatürk in relation to Islam is the cover of the
newspaper Milli Gazete. On the anniversary of Atatürk‘s death (10th November) in 1998, Milli
Gazete, which is known for its close association with the Virtue Party, published the picture
94
Özyürek, p. 152.
95 Same as an abolishment of the religious school (İmam Hatip), the government oppressed the Islamists by
not allowing the university students to cover their heads. Among other academic works on this issue, I found
that Kars (2004), the novel written by Orhan Pamuk, the noble-prize writer, presents the debate over the
veiling-unveiling issue very nicely.
96 Özyürek, ibid. p. 158.
97 Özyürek, ibid. p. 152 – 153.
of Atatürk and his then wife, Latife Hanım in a black veil (Fig. 40). Atatürk and Latife Hanım
married in 1924, one year after the foundation of the republic and few years before he
launched the secularization reforms in 1930s.98 According to Özyürek, Latife Hanım is a
French-educated Turkish woman; although she wore a western-style costume many times, she
only wore a black veil when accompanying Atatürk through Anatolia.
Displaying Atatürk and his veiled wife also concerned the controversial debate about
veiling. Milli Gazete criticized the government that forced the students to unveil (otherwise
they wouldn‘t be accepted to the university) as an insult towards the Anatolian people, whom
Atatürk referred to as ―masters of the nation‖ (köylü milletin efendisidir). Moreover, they
limited the freedom of choosing the way of dressing, which is in conflict with the principle of
democracy and this is one of the aims of Atatürk‘s Reforms. Milli Gazete quoted the 1923
speech of Atatürk: ―The veil recommended by our religion suits both life and virtue well.
Those who imitate European women in their dresses should consider that every nation has its
own traditions and national particularities. No nation should be an imitator of another.‖99 This
quotation demonstrates the positive attitude of the nation‘s founder towards veiling; at the
same time it blames the secular government to be the betrayer of Atatürk.
Although the process of secularization began during Atatürk‘s lifetime, the editors of
Akit and Milli Gazete found issues around Atatürk in the history of the nation-founding that
they could use as strategies to argue with the secularists. Akit‘s cover is so powerful because
the photograph of Atatürk functions as a testimony, a proof of his presence, that he was there
praying religious prayer on the first day of the new republic. By displaying this eminent
photograph, Akit made this fact undeniable. Furthermore, the composition of the page that
posits the picture of the veiled university student under the picture of the praying Atatürk, and
the headlines: ―It Started Like This‖ (Böyle Basladi), and ―And It Became Like That‖ (Ve
Böyle Oldu) make a very strong impact.
Similar to Akit, Milli Gazette‘s use of Atatürk‘s image also makes a strong argument
with the secularists. The picture of Latife Hanım wearing a black veil and walking beside
Atatürk fits perfectly with the speech of the nation‘s founder chosen by the editor. Milli
Gazette‘s cover is a good example of a strategic manipulation of text and image. It declares a
clear statement of Islam, through the subject of veiling, that it is on the side of Atatürk, and
also the other way around, that Atatürk is on their side. More importantly, both Akit and Milli
Gazette ―re-constructed‖ the past by displaying the forgotten history of the role of Islam in the
98
Atatürk and Latife Hanım divorced in 1925.
99 Özyürek, p. 160. It is remarkable that this speech of Atatürk contrasts the way the leader himself dressed.
Later on, in 1925, Atatürk launched the Hat Law that prohibits wearing fez, a religious headgear. The Hat
Law is part of the 1925 Atatürk‘s Reforms that aimed to modernize and secularized the Turkish republic.
foundation of the Turkish state. An image is the key of this asserting-Islamist operation that
centers around the figure of Atatürk. The first image proves that the foundation of the
republic was ground on Islam, as both Atatürk and a religious leader were praying together.
The second image legitimates a veil, an Islamic dress code as it was supported by him. In this
way, the Islamists declare that it is actually them, not the secularists that are on the side of the
national ancestor. It is the Islamists that are the true follower of Atatürk, and the true
guardians of his principle.100
The Superstition and the Images of Atatürk
While the Atatürkists position themselves as ―secularists,‖ they actually treat Atatürk,
as well as his images in a superstitious way. The example I gave above: Chantal Zakari
holding Atatürk‘s framed portrait against the Islamist demonstrator suggests a religious-based
gesture of using an amulet against the devil and the belief in animism: the spirit of Atatürk (as
resides in his portrait). The other, and the more famous example of the supernatural aspect of
Atatürk‘s image is that of his shadow on the hill near the village of Gündeşli in Ardahan (Fig.
41). The picture of the profile of Atatürk is indeed a shadow of the cloud that casted on the
hill. It is remarkable that Ardahan is close to another city, Kars which is densely populated by
the Kurds. On 30th October, 1994, the secularist newspaper Hürriyet published the picture of
Atatürk‘s shadow on the hill. Regarding the bomb by the PKK (Kurdistan Worker Party)
occurred earlier in the same month in Izmir, Hürriyet‘s interpretation of this particular natural
phenomenon as a proof of ―the indivisible unity of our country,‖ 101 aroused Turkish
nationalism and the confirmation of the national boundary around the image of Atatürk. In
this respect, Atatürk appeared as a spirit: the guardian spirit that prevents the nation and the
Turks from the Kurds. Meanwhile, he was a metaphor of the boundary of the nation; his
shadow marked, or in Verdery‘s term, punctuated the national-Turkish space.
The Islamists seek for a mystical aspect of Atatürk too. The link between Atatürk and
Islam that the Virtue Party tries to establish, or more precisely, to resurrect, in order to
legitimate the party and its actions, creates the Islamist intellectuals and media to seek for a
religious-related character of Atatürk. Akit and Milli Gazette I cited earlier are parts of, or, in
relation with this political move of the Virtue Party. This operation is actually a continuation
of what happened during the time of the Welfare Party in 1994. In October, 1994, a well-
known journalist and public figure Cenk Koray published the book ‗Kuran, Islam, Atatürk,
and the Miracle of 19.‘ The magic of number 19 was brought to connect with Atatürk. In
Koray‘s analysis, Atatürk is connected with the magic 19 (and therefore, with Islam) because
100
As a matter of fact, the period that Atatürk worked with some religious leaders is the early 1920s. He
began to distinguish Islam from politics and other aspects in Turkish society in the 1930s.
101 Navaro-Yashin mentioned that this natural phenomenon happens regularly. See Navaro-Yashin. p. 193.
he was born in 1881 and died in 1938, the numbers that are divisible by 19. His first military
assignment was as ―commander of the 19th army corps,‖ the number of letters in his name
(Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) is 19, and he initiated the War of Independence on the 19th May,
1919. In his conclusion, Koray stated that ―Atatürk was sent to Turkey by orders of God in
order to complete a particular mission.‖102
We can see that both the Atatürkists and the Islamists have attempted in interpreting
Atatürk the way that benefits them. By creating a link to Atatürk, they legitimate their
political position and actions. Many aspects of Atatürk were selected and, later presented;
some parts were resurrected after his death in 1938. The identity and the meaning of the
deceased leader, as he already passed away, and therefore incapable of arguing for himself,
appear to be discursive, and sometimes contradict with each other. While Turkish people,
regardless what groups they are in, commemorate him, they construct the myth around him
the way they want him to be. After he passed away, Atatürk never dies from the heart of his
subject. Yet, in the 1990s he is probably not the same as when he was alive. The nation‘s
founder became a site of multiple political expressions. As people fight over the possession of
him, and the construction of the memory about him, Atatürk transformed into a symbol, a tool
in the battle field of Turkey‘s contemporary politics.
102
Navaro-Yashin, ibid. p. 195 – 196.
Conclusion
‗Body and medium are both involved in the meaning of funeral images, as it is the
missing body of the dead in whose place images were installed.‘
Hans Belting, Towards an anthropology of image (2005, p. 46)
Politics is expressed through symbolism. To understand the political process, it is
necessary to understand how the symbolic enters into politics, and how political actors
consciously and unconsciously manipulate symbols. It is probably easier for people to
conceive authority in terms of a person like the king or the president. They use the metaphor
of the body to conceive an authority, or a political system. Many of the most potent symbols
have a palpable quality to them, making it easier for people to treat concepts as persons.
An ideology maintains its identity and its continuity through its symbolic
representation. Whereas a political leader has become an important symbol of organizational
unity, the leader‘s death can threaten this unity. One solution is to keep the symbolism
connected with the leader alive after his decease. I began this thesis with some thoughts
concerning the omnipresence of images of deceased political leaders. What image, and why it
is so important are the main interests of my research. Through an investigation of the
emergence and the use of King Chulalongkorn‘s and Atatürk‘s images, I found they function
as a political symbol, a strategy in a political competition; they make an abstract notion like a
political ideology visible, anthropomorphize them in a form of a person who initiates such
ideology, and emphasize such ideology in the realm of the nation.
As my case studies are the political leaders from the non-Euro-American world, ―the
dead‖ as mentioned by Belting, and Benjamin I referred to in the introduction, has a two-fold
meaning. The first one is the metaphorical meaning of ―the living‖ as actually being ―the
dead.‖ This is because there is none of their representations. Therefore they are not living in
the mind of the public. Since the superstitious belief of the Siamese and the religious
prohibition of the Islam do not allow creating representations of a person in a realistic form,
they are an ―absence,‖ an invisible authority to their subjects. And they are the dead because
they never come into being in a perceivable form. The dead and the absence are synonymous.
In this meaning, I related the idea of the dead with absence, understood as invisibility, and the
idea of life with presence, understood as visibility.
Within this framework, after the contact with the Western world, where the idea of
realistic portraiture came from, King Chulalongkorn and Atatürk came to life, and became
livelier among their populace more than any authoritarian person before them, and this was
through their adoption of western portraiture. By placing their portraits in various forms such
as statue, sculpture, painting, and photograph in the public sphere, they began to live in the
mind of their people. An image is an artificial body. It is then, a media and a medium (in a
sense that an image needs an embodiment in order to acquire any kind of visibility) between
the power, the body, and the perception of the people who see the image. By appropriating the
practice of Western portraiture, King Chulalongkorn and Atatürk were ―present.‖ They had
lives because they, their representation indeed, existed.
The second meaning is the more direct one. ―The dead‖ literary means those who
passed away. As they are no longer living, they have no physical bodies. An image comes to
play a key role in making them eternal. Through an image that has been reproduced and
multiplied in various forms, including that of the paraphernalia, those deceased continue
living in their afterlife. Again, an image mediates, and it replaces the missing body of the
dead. Only the narrative (the myths and the biographies that turned to be hagiographies) could
not maintain their lives, King Chualongkorn and Atatürk forever exist, in other words, they
live in the mind of the people because of a never-ending reproduction of their images, and of
an everlasting presence of their visual representation. Their artificial bodies first replace their
real, missing bodies. The picture of the deceased is meant to introduce the dead in their new
status. Secondly, they maintain their being (though they actually no longer living) in the
public mentality. An image represents the absence of someone. And by arresting the process
of the person‘s bodily decay, an image alters the temporality associated with the person,
bringing him into the realm of the timeless or the sacred.
By comparing the political leaders from two different cultures, I discovered the
similarities by constructing some specific characteristics around them. My starting points
were their status as agents of modernity and as fathers of the nations. In the temporal context
of the early 20th century when westernization / modernization began to expand in the non-
Euro-American new nation-states, Siam and Turkey adopted the discourse of western
modernity, which brought also the conception of realistic portraiture.
The political significance of the adoption and the use of the portrait are very obvious,
though they differ in detail regarding the operation process and the way the portrait is used. In
the case of Turkey, portraits of Atatürk in the early republican period functioned as a tool to
deprive the power of the previous Ottoman regime. As an opposition to Islam, the extensive
production and placing of Atatürk‘s portraits, especially in the form of statues erased the
Islam prohibition of image-making from the society of Turkey. At the same time, these
portraits formulated a nationalistic sentiment for the new nation-state that centers on the
visibility of Atatürk.
While portraiture functioned in the domestic politics in Turkey, King
Chulalongkorn‘s employment of realistic portraiture played an important role in politics, both
inside and outside the country. As a proof of scientific thoughts that ended the superstitious
belief of the Siamese pre-modernity, the king‘s portraits in various kinds of publications, such
as newspaper and postcards helped constructing the image of a modern king in the eyes of the
Western colonizers. On the other hand, King Chulalongkorn‘s equestrian statue structured
Thai nationalism in connection with the royalty. This relationship between nationalism and
royalism of the Siamese (later on, the Thais) is inseparable and finally became a hindrance of
the progress to democracy in contemporary Thai politics.
Interestingly, the orientation of realistic portraiture in both Turkey and Siam has a
special place in the formation of nationalism, the feeling that it is rooted in not just an anti-
Western heterophobia, but also ethnic minorities and their cultures.
In connection with nationalism, images were engaged with defining the national
space too. The placing of portraiture is part of the city planning, as is very clear in Turkey. An
erection of Atatürk‘s busts and statues marked the triumph of the secular republic over the
Islamic Ottoman empire. Later on, it re-confirmed the Turkish space, as we can see from the
so-called ―shadow of Atatürk‖ on the hill near the Kurdish area of Kars. In this perspective,
Turkish nationalism in the images of Atatürk, a symbol of himself and his republican
principle, alienated the minority in Turkey to be ―the other within,‖ and formulated the idea of
the true Turks.
Here comes the reason why portraiture is so effective. What makes the images of
these two leaders very much revered is grounded in the likeness of the image to its model.
When a person is revered, his / her portraits will be revered too, because it is a representation,
an exact replica of that person. It is treated the same way as people treat that actual person.
Yet, when the person passes away, the response and the treat towards the image change
according to the new status of that person (as the spirit). The transformation of a living person
into a spirit of the dead not only causes the change in the way people react to image, but also
paves the way back to a traditional belief of superstition in a modernized society. Both rulers
were modernizers who turned ―sacred‖ or ―divine‖ as they were being worshipped (as a cult
of personality). They are sacralized, despite their roles in modernizing the nation according to
Western criteria of modernity (rationalization and scientification). Image-worship, sometimes
to the point of idolatry, contradicts the modern aspect. What intend to be scientific and
progressive about visual representation ended up being seen ―sacred‖ and ―divine.‖ At the
end, the tradition and the modern co-exist. They do not stand against each other, but walk
hand in hand in the context of political rituals.
The Siamese king uses ritual to shore up his authority, but Turkish revolutionaries
also use rituals to overthrow the monarch. The political elite employs rituals to legitimate his
authority, but rebel battle back with rites of de-legitimation. Ritual is important in every
political system, even in a secularized state like Turkey; rituals still play an important role. An
image is the center of all these actions in political context. In this way, sacred values are
added to political discourse. This means a new kind of relation between religions, at least
something between religious aspects, politics and the state.103
One more thing I found from the study of King Chulalongkorn‘s and Atatürk‘s
images is the fact that the meaning of images, as well as of the person, is instable. As an
image is treated as a text, as coded, as a symbol― an interpretable object ― the image is then
an object of dialogue, having a provocative character. It is not a dead image that always says
the same thing or has the same static metaphor. The meaning of images is indeed contingent,
depending on the socio-political situation of the society, which is also constantly changing.
This point is very clear when speaking about images of the deceased ones. As they do not
speak anymore, the words can be put into their mouths.
An attempt in reviving those who passed away does not reincarnate them the way
they used to be. In fact, the revival creates a multiple identity for those deceased. The
symbolic image, manifest in a physical form, embodies and brings together diverse ideas. It is
multivocal as there is a variety of different meanings attached to the same symbol (the same
symbol may be understood by different people in different ways). Hence, it is ambiguous
because it has no precise meaning. What happened in the past context, gives a multiplicity of
meanings to the résumé of the deceased. It is his complex biography that makes him a good
instrument for revising history. His manifold activities encourage identification from a variety
of people. The deceased leaders are, and will always be, interpreted from various angles
according to the purposes of those who revive them. These meanings may sometimes
contradict with each other. Their complexities make it easy to discern different sets of
emphasis, extract different stories, and thus rewrite history.
This quality or characteristic of a dead person allows the interpretation and thereby
the proclamation over that person as whatever the manipulator wishes him to be. In this way,
Atatürk is a political tool in the conflict between the secularists and the Islamists in the mid
1990s, and King Chulalongkorn is a means in the revival of Thai monarchy‘s popularity, and
the patron saint of the Thai middleclass. It is not that ―they,‖ as the spirit, or the national
divine protector, gaze at us, the living. But it is us that keep an eye on them; their presence in
our mind is a result of our gaze. While thinking that we are being watched by these divinities,
and do things in the hope that it will make them satisfied, we are actually watching them, and
using them to legitimate what we do.
As long as they are still seen as a potent symbol, these deceased leaders will always
be revived. Their lives will be scrutinized; taking some aspects that may benefit the reviver,
103
In this thesis, I skip the use of Atatürk‘s images of the Muslim minority, the Alevi and the activities
around the equestrian statue of King Chulalongkorn in the latest political conflict in 2008. But it shows that
this practice still continues.
then, more layers of meaning will be added to the dead. More and more features in their
images will be presented. Through the pictures, the dead enter the eternality in the presence of
their images.
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Winichakul, Thongchai “ประวตศาสตรไทยแบบราชาชาตนยม จากยคอาณานคมอ าพรางสราชาชาตนยมใหมหรอลทธ
เสดจพอของกระฎมพไทยในปจจบน” (Royalist-Nationalist History: From the Era of Crypto-Colonialism
to the new Royalist-Nationalism, or the Contemporary Thai Bourgeois Cult of Rama V),
ศลปวฒนธรรม, Year 23, Vol. 1 (November, 2001), p. 56 – 65.
_____________, “อยาดเบาวธวทยา ตอบอาจารยสายชล” (Do not underestimate methodology. Response
to Prof. Saichol Sattayanurak), ศลปวฒนธรรม, Year 25, Vol. 11 (September, 2004), p.
114 – 151.
Aeusrivongse, Nithi, ลทธพธเสดจพอ ร. 5 (The cult of Father King Rama V), 1993, Bangkok:
Matichon.
Website
http://sameskybooks.org/board/index.php?showtopic=18052&hl=
http://www.sameskybooks.org/board/index.php?showtopic=17868&hl=
Source of illustration
Fig. 1 Michael Barry, Figurative Art in Medieval Islam and the Riddle of
Bihzâd of Herât (1465 – 1535), p. 40
Fig. 2 Michael Barry, Figurative Art in Medieval Islam and the Riddle of
Bihzâd of Herât (1465 – 1535), p. 41
Fig. 3 Apinan Poshyananda, Western-style Painting and Sculpture in the Thai
Royal Court (Vol. 1), p. 17
Fig. 4 Apinan Poshyananda, Western-style Painting and Sculpture in the Thai
Royal Court (Vol. 1), p. 97
Fig. 5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cumhuriyet_Aniti.JPG
Fig. 6 http://shw.fz-az.fotopages.com/6563259/Republic-Monument-Taksim-
Istanbul.html
Fig. 7 Yael Navaro-Yashin, Faces of the State. Secularism and Public Life in
Turkey, p. 88
Fig. 8 Apinan Poshyananda, Western-style Painting and Sculpture in the Thai
Royal Court (Vol. 1), p. 19
Fig. 9 Surakarn Toesomboon, พระบรมรปทรงมาทามกลางบรบทสงคมและ อดมการณสมยรชกาลท
5 ถงสมยหลงเปลยนแปลงการปกครอง (Chulalongkorn Equestrian in the social and
ideological context from the reign of King Chulalongkorn to after the change
to Democracy), p. 236
Fig. 10 Apinan Poshyananda, Western-style Painting and Sculpture in the Thai
Royal Court (Vol. 1), p. 20
Fig. 11 Kraireuk Nana, การเมอง “นอกพงศาวดาร” รชกาลท ๕ เบองหลงพระบาทสมเดจพระ
จลจอมเกลาเจาอยหวเสดจประพาสยโรป (Politics outside annals. Behind the scene of
King Chulalongkorn‘s Royal Visits to Europe), p. 31
Fig. 12 Kraireuk Nana, การเมอง “นอกพงศาวดาร ” รชกาลท ๕ เบองหลงพระบาทสมเดจพระ
จลจอมเกลาเจาอยหวเสดจประพาสยโรป (Politics outside annals. Behind the scene of
King Chulalongkorn‘s Royal Visits to Europe), p. 55
Fig. 13 Kraireuk Nana, การเมอง “นอกพงศาวดาร ” รชกาลท ๕ เบองหลงพระบาทสมเดจพระ
จลจอมเกลาเจาอยหวเสดจประพาสยโรป (Politics outside annals. Behind the scene of
King Chulalongkorn‘s Royal Visits to Europe), p. 179
Fig. 14 Kraireuk Nana, การเมอง “นอกพงศาวดาร ” รชกาลท ๕ เบองหลงพระบาทสมเดจพระ
จลจอมเกลาเจาอยหวเสดจประพาสยโรป (Politics outside annals. Behind the scene of
King Chulalongkorn‘s Royal Visits to Europe), p. 193
Fig. 15 Thanavi Chotpradit. Photograph taken in 2007
Fig. 16 Thanavi Chotpradit. Photograph taken in 2008
Fig. 17 Thanavi Chotpradit. Photograph taken in 2008
Fig. 18 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Güven_park_anıtı.jpg
Fig. 19 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Güven_park_anıtı_
arka_heykel.jpg
Fig. 20 http://www.archmuseum.org/Gallery/DisplayPhoto.aspx?ID=9&DetailID
=2&ExhibitionID=6
Fig. 21 Surakarn Toesomboon, พระบรมรปทรงมาทามกลางบรบทสงคมและอดมการณสมยรชกาลท
5 ถงสมยหลงเปลยนแปลงการปกครอง (Chulalongkorn Equestrian in the social and
ideological context from the reign of King Chulalongkorn to after the change
to Democracy), p. 236
Fig. 22 http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/display/c4 3582d7-b2bd-4ac7-
8ada-1958907df268.jpg
Fig. 23 http://www.digital-images.net/Images/Rome/Rome_Select/EquestrianStatue_
VictorEmmanuel _ 6644.jpg
Fig. 24 Surakarn Toesomboon, พระบรมรปทรงมาทามกลางบรบทสงคมและอดมการณสมยรชกาลท
5 ถงสมยหลงเปลยนแปลงการปกครอง (Chulalongkorn Equestrian in the social and
ideological context from the reign of King Chulalongkorn to after the change
to Democracy), p. 236
Fig. 25 Surakarn Toesomboon, พระบรมรปทรงมาทามกลางบรบทสงคมและอดมการณสมยรชกาลท
5 ถงสมยหลงเปลยนแปลงการปกครอง (Chulalongkorn Equestrian in the social and
ideological context from the reign of King Chulalongkorn to after the change
to Democracy), p. 261
Fig. 26 Surakarn Toesomboon, พระบรมรปทรงมาทามกลางบรบทสงคมและอดมการณสมยรชกาลท
5 ถงสมยหลงเปลยนแปลงการปกครอง (Chulalongkorn Equestrian in the social and
ideological context from the reign of King Chulalongkorn to after the change
to Democracy), p. 233
Fig. 27 Surakarn Toesomboon, พระบรมรปทรงมาทามกลางบรบทสงคมและอดมการณสมยรชกาลท
5 ถงสมยหลงเปลยนแปลงการปกครอง (Chulalongkorn Equestrian in the social and
ideological context from the reign of King Chulalongkorn to after the change
to Democracy), p. 241
Fig. 28 Irene Louise Stengs, Worshipping the Great Moderniser, The cult of King
Chulalongkorn, patron saint of the Thai middle class, no page number
Fig. 29 Irene Louise Stengs, Worshipping the Great Moderniser, The cult of King
Chulalongkorn, patron saint of the Thai middle class, no page number
Fig. 30 Surakarn Toesomboon, พระบรมรปทรงมาทามกลางบรบทสงคมและอดมการณสมยรชกาลท
5 ถงสมยหลงเปลยนแปลงการปกครอง (Chulalongkorn Equestrian in the social and
ideological context from the reign of King Chulalongkorn to after the change
to Democracy), p. 270
Fig. 31 Surakarn Toesomboon, พระบรมรปทรงมาทามกลางบรบทสงคมและอดมการณสมยรชกาลท
5 ถงสมยหลงเปลยนแปลงการปกครอง (Chulalongkorn Equestrian in the social and
ideological context from the reign of King Chulalongkorn to after the change
to Democracy), p. 270
Fig. 32 Surakarn Toesomboon, พระบรมรปทรงมาทามกลางบรบทสงคมและอดมการณสมยรชกาลท
5 ถงสมยหลงเปลยนแปลงการปกครอง (Chulalongkorn Equestrian in the social and
ideological context from the reign of King Chulalongkorn to after the change
to Democracy), p. 271
Fig. 33 http://farm1.static.flickr.com/89/214267729_3d934fd2f1.jpg
Fig. 34 http://www.thaisecondhand.com/view/productpic/p5347534n1.jpg
Fig. 35 http://www.komchadluek.net/2006/12/18/images/6326814low.jpg
Fig. 36 Yael Navaro-Yashin, Faces of the State. Secularism and Public Life in
Turkey, p. 197
Fig. 37 Yael Navaro-Yashin, Faces of the State. Secularism and Public Life in
Turkey, p. 88
Fig. 38 http://www.sumerezgu.com/resim_goster.asp?img=1462008231615.JPG
Fig. 39 Esra Özyürek, Nostalgia for the Modern. State Secularism and Everyday
Politics in Turkey, p. 153
Fig. 40 http://mizrak.web.tr/images/latife_hanim_b.JPG
Fig. 41 http://www.thewhitepath.com/atamount.jpg
Fig. 1 Gentil Bellini, Portrait of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror, painted in
Istanbul, c. 1480, National Gallery, London
Fig. 2 Sinan Bey, Portrait of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror, painted in Istanbul,
c. 1480, Library of Topkapı Sarayı Museum, Istanbul
Fig. 3 Anonymous, Phra Phuttha Loetla Napalai, gold enamel and precious stones, Third
Reign, height 300 cm. Convocation Hall, Temple of the Emerald Buddha, Bangkok.
Fig. 4 Prince Praditthavorakarn, Phra Syama Devadhiraj, gold, Forth Reign, height 20 cm.
Paisal Taksin Hall, Grand Palace, Bangkok.
Fig. 6 Detail of the monument
Fig. 5 Pietro Canonica, Cumhuriyet Anıtı (Monument of the Republic), bronze and marble,
1928, Taksim Square, Istanbul, Turkey
Fig. 7 The statue of Atatürk in a military uniform made in the İnci studio in 1930s. The statue
is located near to the highway that linked Izmir and Istanbul.
Fig. 8 Anonymous, King Mongkut, photograph, 1861, National Archives of Bangkok,
Bangkok
Fig. 9 Emile François Chatrousse, King
Mongkut, guilded bronze, 1863, height 59 cm.
Ratcha Karaya Sapha Hall, Grand Palace,
Bangkok
Fig. 10 Luang Theprojanana (Plub), King Mongkut, plaster,
1863 (casted in bronze in 1960), height 176 cm. Tamnak
Petch, Wat Bowonniwetwihan, Bangkok
Fig. 11 The cover of L‟Illustration featuring King Chulalongkorn and Tsar Nicolas II, 14
September, 1897
Fig. 12 The caricature in Le Pilori displaying the French President Félix Faure unwillingly
kissed King Chulalongkorn while he actually preferred Tsar Nicalos II, 19 September 1897.
Fig. 13 The postcard showing King Chulalongkorn meeting with Bismarck in Germany,
dating 2 September 1897. Printed in Germany
Fig. 14 The postcard displaying the world leading monarchs (King Chulalongkorn is on the
top of the left corner). c. 1906, Printed in England
Fig. 15 Islam ornament over the Christian cross on the ceiling of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul.
Fig. 16 Heinrich Krippel, Victory Monument, 1927, Ulus Square, Ankara
Fig. 17 Detail of the relief on the pedestal showing battle scene.
Fig. 18 Josef Thorak and Anton Hanack, Monument to a Secure Confident Future, 1935,
Güvenpark, Kızılay, Ankara. The inscription on the pedestal read ―Türk Ogün Çalıs Güven‖
(Turk! Be proud, Work and be Confident)
Fig. 19 The other side of the Monument to a Secure Confident Future showing Atatürk
standing with four Turkish youths
Fig. 20 Reliefs showing working people on the pedestal of the Monument to a Secure
Confident Future
Fig. 21 Georges Ernest Saulo, The Equestrian of King Chulalongkorn, cast in 1907 at Ateliers
de la Maison Susse Frères in Paris, erected at the Royal Plaza in Bangkok in 1908
Fig. 22 The Equestrian of Louis XIV, Paris
Fig. 23 The Equestrian of King Victor Emmanuel II, Rome
Fig. 24 The Equestrian of King Chulalongkorn (view from Ratchadamnoen Avenue),
Photograph taken in 1908
Fig. 25 The Opening Ceremony on 11th November 1908 (The equestrian is under-covered)
Fig. 26 The inscription on the plaque on the pedestal of King Chulalongkorn‘s Equestrian
Fig. 27 Prince Praditthavorakorn, The Statue of King Mongkut as Phra Syama Devadhiraj,
Gold, Fifth Reign, height 20 cm. Ambara Villa, Dusit Palace, Bangkok
Fig. 28 New Year Greeting Card
Fig. 29 New Year Greeting Card
Fig. 30 100 Baht Banknote
Fig. 31 100 Baht Banknote
Fig. 32 100 Baht Banknote
Fig. 33 The cult worshippers at the Equestrian of King Chulalongkorn
Fig. 34 King Chualongkorn‘s coin
Fig. 35 One of the cult worshipper, Police Manager General Payoong Trongsawasdi, shows
his amulets which one of them is King Chulalongkorn‘s coin. He believes that these amulets
protect him from the helicopter accident.
Fig. 36 Statues and busts of Atatürk for sale
Fig. 37 Newspaper advertisement featuring the picture of Atatürk in 1994
Fig. 38 Atatürk performed a traditional Aegean folkdance during his visit to Bursa in 1938.
Fig. 39 Cover of Akit on October, 1998
Fig. 40 Atatürk and his then wife, Latife Hanım
Fig. 41 The shadow of Atatürk‘s profile on the hill near the village of Gündeşli in Ardahan