The Turkish military, in particular, sees itself as the steadfast guardian of the nationalism he taught Turks to value above other ideals.Īndrew Mango, who was for many years in charge of the BBC’s broadcasts in Turkish and has published numerous studies of Turkish affairs, has now scrupulously separated fact from the massive accretions of fiction with which both Mustapha Kemal and his faithful followers built the legend of Atatürk He has spent many years writing this biography, and it is likely to remain the standard work for a long time. Official photographs of his handsome if haughty face, prominent in public places throughout the country, attest to his enduring and genuine popularity. But where the others left behind nothing but the memory of their evil, Mustapha Kemal, out of the wreck of the Ottoman empire, fashioned Turkey into the thriving nation-state it is today. In common with the others, he believed that social engineering justified whatever means were required, and he had no qualms about destruction and murder. Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern TurkeyĪmong dictators of recent times, Mustapha Kemal, who later took the honorific name Atatürk, is the exception.
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