Philip M. Pedley

The Ataturk Interview Philip M. Pedley

This work examines the provenance of an interview conducted with Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk by Karl Emil Hildebrand, published in the US in 1926. The interview's significance is twofold. Firstly, Mustafa Kemal's acknowledgement of Turkish culpability in Armenian massacres and secondly his assertion that a last-minute confession by a prominent female conspirator thwarted the 1926 Izmir assassination attempt on his life. Leading Turkish scholar, Professor Turkkaya Ataöv, asserts that the interview is an Armenian fabrication made in support of false claims of genocide.
New evidence, revealed here, establishes the provenance of the interview. Mustafa Kemal's acknowledgement of Ottoman guilt is confirmed. It is also contended that the Izmir plot conspirator who alerted Mustafa Kemal was Turkey's leading feminist and PRP member, Halide Edib. This revelation challenges the prevailing narrative that Mustafa Kemal exploited the attempted assassination to silence innocent PRP members who had no knowledge of the plot.