Tunisian statesman. He was the leader of the independence struggle and the first president of Tunisia. His family is thought to be of Libyan origin. He made Tunisia a secular, pro-Western Arab state.
He was born on August 3, 1903, in the town of Monastir on the coastline of Tunisia. His father was a petty officer working under the command of the Bey of Tunis. He completed his secondary education at College Sadıkî and Lycee Carnot in the capital Tunisia between 1917 and 1924. The education he received in these two schools helped him acquire both Arabic and French culture at a very early age.
He started his political life in 1922 as a member of the Constitutional Liberal Party (Düstur Party). He went to Paris for higher education in 1924. He enrolled in the Faculty of Law and L'Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques (Free School of Political Sciences). During the years he spent in Paris, he had close relations with French liberals and Syrian origin, the important Arab nationalist and Islamic thinker of the period, Şekib Arslan.
She married a Frenchman in 1926. Later, he would have a second marriage, and in 1963 he married Vesile ben Ammarun, one of the pioneers of the women's movement in Tunisia. After finishing his higher education, he returned to Tunisia in 1927 and started working as a lawyer. He carried out political work in the Dustur Party between 1927 and 1933.
Habib Bourguiba (3 August 1903 – 6 April 2000) was a Tunisian lawyer, nationalist leader and statesman who led the country from 1956 to 1957 as the prime minister of the Kingdom of Tunisia (1956–1957) then as the first president of Tunisia (1957–1987). Prior to his presidency, he led the nation to independence from France, ending the 75-year-old protectorate and earning the title of "Supreme Combatant".
The Dustur Party was struggling to save the country from French domination and to ensure the independence of Tunisia. The party aimed to create a traditionalist Tunisia. In the actions and propaganda of the Dustur Party, the Arab and Islamic character of Tunisia was particularly emphasized. After 11 years of party membership, he left the Dustur Party at the end of 1933, together with a group of Tunisian intellectuals armed with Western ideas. In the same year, he published the newspaper L'Action Tunisienne (Tunisian Action).
In March 1934, he founded the Neo-Düstur Party with his friends who broke away from the Düstur Party. In September 1934, he was arrested along with other party founders as a result of the general pressure and intimidation policy initiated by the French. He remained in prison for about two years. He was released after the left-leaning Popular Front came to power in France.
In 1937, he went to Paris once again and explained the demands of Neo-Destur to the French administrators. The aim of Neo-Destur was expressed in its broadest terms as "to create an indivisible union between France and Tunisia". It has been stated that this principle is the basis of all other demands of the Neo-Destur. At that time, a government was established in France under the chairmanship of Socialist Leon Blum. The relatively liberal conditions created by the Blum government increased the hopes of Bourguiba and his friends that French rule in Tunisia could end by agreement with France. The government in France also entered into more understanding relations with the nationalist forces in its colonies and mandated lands in order to counter the threat of fascism that appeared in Europe at that time.
When Leon Blum was replaced by a right-wing regime, the French policy of oppression in Arab countries in North Africa was revived, and harsh repressive measures were taken in the Moroccan town of Meknes, which shook the entire Maghreb (North Africa). Algerian nationalist leader Messali Hajj was arrested and the policy of oppression spread to Tunisia. Habib Bourguiba was arrested again in March 1938, together with a group of his fighting friends.
His detention, which started in Tunisia, continued until November 1943 in a prison near Marseille, France. After his release, he went to Rome and stayed there for a while. The Italians offered him cooperation against the French, and Bourguiba insisted on the independence of Tunisia for cooperation. During this period, he sent instructions to the party members, asking them to unite around Moncef Bey, who had just taken over Tunisia and was known for his nationalist attitudes, and to create the national unity of Tunisia in his person.
He did not attempt to cooperate with German and Italian forces against French colonialism. In a letter he wrote to Habib Thameur, one of his close struggle friends, in 1942, he warned that the defeat of France against Germany should not deceive the Tunisian nationalists and therefore they should not hope for anything from the Germans.
The emergence of the Arab League Organization around the end of World War II created new hopes. In 1946, he went to Cairo to explain the issue of Tunisia's independence and to provide support. Later, he moved to New York and began to continue his policy of solving the Tunisia problem through diplomatic channels at the United Nations.
He prioritized the policy of providing support from the USA in international politics. He started a fight against pro-independence but also anti-American socialists who opposed French rule in Tunisia. He alienated socialist-oriented unionists and workers from the party through his party, Neo-Destur, which kept the Tunisian union movement under control.
By influencing Ferhat Hashed, one of the leaders of the Tunisian labor movement and Neo-Destur, who was killed by the French secret services in 1953, he removed the General Union of Tunisian Trade Unions from the international trade union organization of the Socialist Bloc and connected it to the World Union of Free Trade Unions. He gave confidence to the Western world with these political outbursts.
He also stood against the use of violence to achieve Tunisia's independence. He developed the thesis that Tunisia's independence could be achieved through negotiations. This line of his took a further rift with the old Düstur, with whom he had already been in conflict for a long time.
The old Dustur, who gained power from the Zeytuniye Madrasa in Tunisia, the most influential Islamic teaching institution in Africa after Cairo's al-Azhar, accused the secular-pro-Western Bourguiba and his friends of treason. He condemned the independence policy, which emphasized the path of negotiations.
In 1954, he had the opportunity to put his theses into practice when Pierre Mendes-France, whom he had known for many years, became Prime Minister of France. Pierre Mendes-France promised internal autonomy to Tunisia. This promise helped Bourguiba put forward the thesis that a gradual and gradual transition from internal autonomy to independence could be made.
However, this policy led to the most important crisis he encountered within Neo-Destur. Salah Ben Yusuf, one of the Neo-Destur leaders known for his radical views, opposed internal autonomy and accused Bourguiba of being an "agent of the West, Arab nationalism and Islam" with the slogan "struggle until full independence and the liberation of all North Africa". After a tough intra-organizational struggle and occasional unrest in Tunisia, Salah Ben Yusuf was eliminated.
Faced with the bloody Algerian War of Independence after the Vietnam defeat, the Guy Mollet government in France signed the independence protocol of Tunisia with Bourguiba on March 20, 1956. Habib Bourguiba became the first president of Tunisia.
Bourguiba ruled Tunisia single-handedly after independence. He resisted the Nasserist Arab nationalist wave that affected the entire Arab world from the mid-1950s to the 1970s. He clashed with Nasser. He attracted criticism because he advocated Arab recognition of Israel's existence. After 1962, when Algeria gained independence, it could not get along with this powerful neighbor. Ben Bella supported Salah Ben Yusuf against Bourguiba. He managed to survive despite all the adverse conditions. He was elected president for life in 1974. He made Tunisia a secular, pro-Western Arab state.
He strengthened his prestige by allowing the Palestine Liberation Organization to establish its new headquarters in Tunisia after it left Lebanon as a result of the Israeli attack in 1982. The relocation of the Arab League Organization from Cairo to Tunisia in 1979 also highlighted its role in international politics.