Elias Sassoon

The Individual in Ataturk's Revolution Elias Sassoon 1st edition

Mustapha Kemal Ataturk (?Father of the Turk?), is the myth that was a man that was claimed as a visionary who became a warrior, leader and statesmen. The West knew him first as the commanding Ottoman officer in World War I?s Battle of Gallipoli - a defeat for the Allies, and the Ottoman?s greatest victory. We meet him next in 1919 as the Commander thwarting the victorious Allies' plan to partition the Turkish portion of the Ottoman Empire. He defeated them, removed the last Sultan, secured the territory of the Turkish national state, and became its first president in 1923. During his presidency, he embarked on political, economic, and cultural reforms that transformed the country into a secular republic where nationalism sanctified by science and the personality cult reigned. Militarily and politically he excelled at all levels, from the tactical, through the operational, and to the strategic. The book examines Ataturk?s life from his youth as a Muslim boy in the politically and culturally volatile Macedonia, to his education in nonreligious and military schools, and finally to his conversion into a Turkish nationalist and a leading force of the modernizing Young Turk movement. Ambitious, glory seeking, defiant, fanatical, violent, uncompromising, and ideological, he embraced the crowd and shunned the individual. Ataturk was the product of the new ideas circulating that included a unique mix of scientism, materialism, and social Darwinism, which triggered his grand scheme of building a race and nation. To many, Ataturk was the enlightened despot and only leader to turn a Muslim nation into a Western, secular state. We question the assumption: Was Ataturk a saint or a skillful tyrant whose goal was the suppression of the individual spirit? Answering this is the goal. We can say that Ataturk?s career is reflective of Adolph Hitler who imitated Atatürk?s radical construction of a nation from the ashes of defeat in World War I, who defied the victorious Western powers, seized control, then remade Turkey along nationalist, secular, totalitarian, and ethnically exclusive lines. These achievements were aided by a ruthless suppression and elimination of the Armenian and Greek minorities. The Turkey of Ataturk, a model of statism, provides an example of how diverse populations can be harnessed into a single herd and then used to annihilate all true freedoms. This is a lesson to us all.