Atıf Hodja had written the booklet a year and a half before the Hat Reform. Its first edition had already sold out and there was no plan for a reprint. So, while trying him for his views was unfair, trying him for views he expressed before the revolution was absurd. That’s why the first court found him innocent and granted his release.
But the new regime, eager to crush all opponents of the brimmed hat, needed a scapegoat for teaching a lesson to all dissidents. So an order came from Ankara, the new capital, for Atıf Hodja’s rearrest and retrial in the Independence Tribunal—an arbitrary court that the new regime, following the example of the French Revolution’s Tribunal Révolutionnaire, had established for eliminating political opponents. After a brief trial, the Independence Tribunal announced its verdict, which came as a shock to almost everyone. Both Atıf Hodja and a cleric named Ali Rıza, his “collaborator,” were sentenced to death; both were hung on the gallows on February 4, 1926. Other so-called collaborators were sentenced to prison terms.
Nor were these men the only victims of the Hat Reform. Right after Mustafa Kemal’s August 1925 declaration that all Turks must wear brimmed hats, dissatisfaction grew in many parts of Anatolia. Protests in late 1925 and early 1926 were brutally suppressed. In Maras¸, people marched in the streets, shouting, “We don’t want hats,” and twenty “reactionaries” were executed while others were sentenced to prison terms of three to ten years.
In the city of Erzurum, a local sheikh and his supporters petitioned the governor for permission to continue to wear traditional headgear—which was not only culturally preferred but also better suited to the cold winters of Eastern Anatolia. After the governor’s dismissal of the request and his order that the spokesmen be arrested, protests grew and gendarmes opened fire on the crowd, killing as many as twenty-three people.
In Rize, a town on the Black Sea coast, a similar protest erupted, soon becoming a full-blown uprising. In response, the government sent a warship to bombard the rebellious villages. A British consular document reports that government troops suffered a hundred or so casualties while suppressing the insurgency. The number of civilian casualties, which probably was much higher, is unknown.
But the new regime, eager to crush all opponents of the brimmed hat, needed a scapegoat for teaching a lesson to all dissidents. So an order came from Ankara, the new capital, for Atıf Hodja’s rearrest and retrial in the Independence Tribunal—an arbitrary court that the new regime, following the example of the French Revolution’s Tribunal Révolutionnaire, had established for eliminating political opponents. After a brief trial, the Independence Tribunal announced its verdict, which came as a shock to almost everyone. Both Atıf Hodja and a cleric named Ali Rıza, his “collaborator,” were sentenced to death; both were hung on the gallows on February 4, 1926. Other so-called collaborators were sentenced to prison terms.
Nor were these men the only victims of the Hat Reform. Right after Mustafa Kemal’s August 1925 declaration that all Turks must wear brimmed hats, dissatisfaction grew in many parts of Anatolia. Protests in late 1925 and early 1926 were brutally suppressed. In Maras¸, people marched in the streets, shouting, “We don’t want hats,” and twenty “reactionaries” were executed while others were sentenced to prison terms of three to ten years.
In the city of Erzurum, a local sheikh and his supporters petitioned the governor for permission to continue to wear traditional headgear—which was not only culturally preferred but also better suited to the cold winters of Eastern Anatolia. After the governor’s dismissal of the request and his order that the spokesmen be arrested, protests grew and gendarmes opened fire on the crowd, killing as many as twenty-three people.
In Rize, a town on the Black Sea coast, a similar protest erupted, soon becoming a full-blown uprising. In response, the government sent a warship to bombard the rebellious villages. A British consular document reports that government troops suffered a hundred or so casualties while suppressing the insurgency. The number of civilian casualties, which probably was much higher, is unknown.
