Jinnah Road in heart of Ankara

The most important and posh area of the capital has a picture of Pakistan’s founding father installed in a frame at the start of the largest road. The Cinnah Caddesi is a major road located in the heart of Ankara, the capital of Turkey. It is one of the most important arteries of traffic and commerce in the city. It was dedicated to, and named after, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. In Turkish language, Jinnah is spelled as ‘Cinnah’.

The Quaid and the Making of Pakistan

How critical was Quaid-i-Azam’s role in the making of Pakistan? Surprisingly though, it was most succinctly and brilliantly summed up in rather unsuspecting quarters – in H.V. Hodson (d. 2000)’s The Great Divide (1969), perhaps the most authoritative British account of the imperial retreat from the subcontinent. He says:

Of all the personalities in the last act of the great drama of India’s rebirth to independence, Mohammad Ali Jinnah is at once the most enigmatic and the most important. One can imagine any of the other principal actors…. Replaced by a substitute in the same role – a different representative of this or that interest or community, even a different Viceroy – without thereby implying any radical change in the denouncement. But it is barely conceivable that events would have taken the same course, that the last struggle would have been a struggle of three, not two, well-balanced adversaries, and that a new nation State of Pakistan would have been created, but for the personality and leadership of one man, Mr. Jinnah. The irresistible demand for Indian independence, and the British will to relinquish power in India soon after the end of the Second World War, were the result of influences that had been at work long before the present story of a single decade begins; the protagonists on this side or that of the imperial relationship were tools of historical forces which they did not create and could not control… Whereas the irresistible demand for Pakistan, and the solidarity of the Indian Muslims behind the demand, were creations of that decade alone, ad supremely the creations of one man.

Of relevance here is how Alfred Broachard evaluated the role of Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938) in the making of the modern Turkey:

Without Napoleon, without de Gaulle, there would still be a France.
Without Washington, there would certainly be the United States.
Without Lenin, it is certain that there would be the Soviet Union; but
without Ataturk, it is certain that there would have been no Turkey.

Turkey had, of course, had a territorial, political, cultural and ethnic existence in history for over five centuries before Ataturk transformed it into modern Turkey in 1923. In contract, Pakistan fell even below the category of middle nineteenth-century “Italy” which the Austrian Chancellor, Matternich (1809-48), had most disparagingly characterized as a mere a “geographical expression”. Pakistan was not even such an expression barely fifteen years before its emergence. There was a “nation” called Turkey for several centuries, but there was none called Pakistan before 1947. Hence if Ataturk’s presence in the early 1920s was critical to have making of modern Turkey, how much more critical should have been Jinnah’s presence in the 1940s in the emergence of Pakistan, especially since she was bereft of any historical prototype hand parentage? Hence Leonard Mosley and a host of other contemporary observers and historians (including Penderal Moon, Ian Stephens, John Terraine, Margaret Bourke-White, Frank Moraes, and D.F. Karaka) rate Jinnah as being the critical variable in its emergence to a point that they characterize Pakistan as a “one-man achievement”.

On spiritual and sentimentalities with Turkey (4th Mar 1948)

Reply to the speech made by the first Turkish Ambassador to Pakistan at the time of presenting Credentials to the Quaid-e-Azam on 4th March, 1948.

Your Excellency,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you today as the first Turkish Ambassador to Pakistan. But my pleasure is enhanced, as there is a unique significance about today’s ceremony to the people of Pakistan for historical reasons. Your Excellency has yourself observed that many spiritual and sentimental ties born and grown in the course of a long history bind the people of Turkey to the people of Pakistan. Not only this but also by a turn of the world situation during the past 50 years or more, Turkey has been in our thoughts constantly and has drawn our admiration for the velour of your people and the way in which your statesmen and leaders have struggled and fought almost single handed in the midst of Europe for your freedom and sovereignty which have been happily maintained.

The exploits of your leaders in many a historic field of battle; the progress of your Revolution; the rise and career of the great Ataturk, his revitalization of your nation by his great statesmanship, courage and foresight all these stirring events are well-known to the people of Pakistan. In fact, right from the very birth of political consciousness amongst the Muslims of this great sub-continent, the fortunes of your country were observed by us with deep sympathy and interest. I can, therefore, assure Your Excellency that the Muslims of Pakistan entertain sentiments of affection and esteem for your country, and now Turkey and Pakistan both as free, sovereign and independent countries, can strengthen their ties more and more for the good of both.

We hope that with Your Excellency’s assistance and cooperation we may be able to build up closer political and cultural ties with your State, and thus contribute our share to the attainment of peace and prosperity throughout the world.

Finally, I extend a most cordial welcome to Your Excellency as the first Ambassador of Turkey to Pakistan a welcome charged with the deepest affection born of historical and cultural ties and traditions of the past.

Pakistan Zindabad