1926: Ziya Hursit and others for a plot against Ataturk

On this date in 1926, 15 people who had been sentenced to death only the day before for attempting to assassinate Turkish statesman Atatürk were hanged in Constantinople.

Ziya Hursit (English Wikipedia entry | Turkish), a former National Assembly delegate who didn’t see eye to eye with Atatürk, generally goes down as the ringleader in this affair.

Their object? To gun down the President during a visit to Izmir a few weeks previous. When interrogated, Hursit “admitted at the outset his intention to kill the President of the Republic.” (London Times, June 29, 1926)

Frictions with said President had been growing over the preceding months, as Atatürk broke the eggs to make the Turkish Republic’s omelet.

In early 1926, Mustafa Kemal also sought to bring the manner in which Turkish society was regulated into line with European countries. On 17 February 1926, the Turkish parliament approved a new civil code which was translated almost verbatim from the civil code in the Swiss canton of Neuchatel. The changes it introduced included: granting Turkish citizens the right to choose their own religion, thus abolishing the previous prohibition on apostasy from Islam; officially recognizing only civil marriage ceremonies conducted by representatives of the civil authorities … outlawing polygamy; making divorce dependent on a decision of the courts; lifting the ban on Muslim women marrying non-Muslims; and granting men and women equal inheritance rights.

The new Civil Code was followed by a battery of further legal reforms to try to bring Turkey into line with contemporary Europe. On 1 March 1926, parliament approved a new Penal Code, which was translated from the Italian Penal Code of 1889. A Code of Obligations was introduced on 22 April 1926, again based on the one in Swiss canton of Neuchatel. On 9 May 1926, parliament approved a new Commercial Code, which was largely based on German law.

(Source)

This first of the Turkish Republic’s political assassination attempts and arguably its last serious bid to reverse secularism licensed an efficient purge and further consolidation of power by Atatürk, who over the weeks ahead shattered the remnants of the Unionists and Progressive Republicans and settled in for essentially secure autocratic governance for the balance of his life.

The alleged conspirators in the hit — not all of them as eager as Hursit to avow responsibility over the two-plus weeks’ trial — were hanged at a couple different locations in the former capital this date, bearing placards damning them for “attempting to assassinate our President, Mustapha Kemal Pasha, who is the saviour of Turkey’s honour.” One of them had a botched execution with a broken rope and a do-over.

(The quote is from the London Times dispatch about the executions, printed July 15, 1926. This story gives the figure of 15 hanged; it appears to me that the correct number that date was either 13 or 14, with two additional death sentences handed down in absentia. It was, in any event, more death sentences than the public prosecutor himself had demanded (11) in the case.)

* The city wasn’t renamed Istanbul until 1930.

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