Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was one of the most significant political leaders of the twentieth century. How did he rise from humble origins in modern-day Greece to become the leader of the new Turkish Republic out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and go on to radically transform Turkish society?In this book, George Gawrych studies Atatürk’s career in detail. He shows the remarkable character of the man: a war hero who considered himself ‘baba’ or father to his troops with a library of over 4000 books, Atatürk married the traits of the classic military man-of-action with those of the intellectual and theorist. Gawrych places Atatürk in the context of his times to reveal how with these unique character traits he harnessed wider forces of societal change and transformation to set Turkey on a path of secular nationalism, the legacy of which are explored in the text and can be seen everywhere in Turkey today, from the second names he imposed on citizens to the adoption of the Latin alphabet. Attentive, too, to the costs of Atatürk’s policies, including the suppression of the minorities of the former multi-ethnic, interfaith and polyglot Ottoman Empire in the name of ‘Turkification’, the book presents a nuanced analysis of a figure who through force of will and expert manipulation of the conditions within which he found himself, did much to define modern Turkey today.
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