Ataturk - the man whose very name invokes strong mixed opinions. Some view him as a hero who forged a nation, whilst others see him as a traitor who sold out his culture and religion. Born at a time when the Ottomans were desperately clinging on to their survival, he would go on to fight for the Sultan in numerous conflicts including WWI. But from 1918 onwards, as he saw his homeland being partitioned by multiple powers, he positioned himself as a revolutionary nationalist leader. Against all odds he led the Turkish National Movement to victory and forged Turkey, a new nation that was born from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. During his presidency, he would give the Turkish republic a brand new identity; one that saw it pivot away from its Middle Eastern Islamic roots to one that embraced Modernisation and western ideals. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was born in 1881 in present day Thessalonica, Greece. Known as Selanik to the Turks, it would remain under Ottoman rule until 1912. The city had a significant Ladino speaking Jewish population; this would later fuel his Islamist foes to allege that his ancestors were Jewish converts to Islam and he himself was in fact a Donmeh, or crypto-Jew. Mustafa’s father Ali Reza Efendi had served in the military and later became a lumber trader; whilst his mother Zubayde Hanim came from a farming background. Mustafa’s ethnic origins have been the subject of intense scrutiny as his parents’ backgrounds are difficult to pinpoint. Whilst his mother was most likely of Turkish descent, his father has variously been labelled as Albanian, Slavic and Turkish. At Mustafa’s birth, Ali Reza hung his sword over his cradle, foreshadowing his later military career. Once of age, his father decided to send him to a secular school, despite his wife’s appeals to send him to a madrassa instead. This decision likely contributed to having a profound effect on Mustafa later on and he would be forever grateful to his father for this. Tragedy would soon hit the household as Ali Reza passed away when Mustafa was just 7 years old. The young child would continue his secular education in Selanik in the hope of joining the Ottoman bureaucracy, which had undergone somewhat of a western transformation through the Tanzimat reforms of the 19th century. Strong-minded and independent even at an early age, Mustafa decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and took an entrance exam to join the local military school. It was while at this school that Ataturk got the nickname “Kemal” (The Perfect One) due to the impression he made as a good student in his mathematics classes. In 1895, he moved to a military school in what is now Bitola, North Macedonia where he made friends with Ali Fethi Okyar who would later help him in his future political career. After finishing military school, Mustafa enrolled in the War College in Istanbul in 1899, the college was a hotbed of political activism against the ruling Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II. Although not initially involved in political activity, he was eventually introduced to dissident thought which later became known to the authorities but he was allowed to finish his course and graduate as a second lieutenant in 1902 and was among the top in his class. When he graduated from the General Staff College in 1905 as a Captain, Mustafa had been in military education for over a decade. Not even 25 years old, the young man was now ready to go out into the real world and make a name for himself. Despite being highly accomplished academically, Mustafa’s past of political activism would soon catch up with him as he was informed upon by an Ottoman spy when he discussed the Sultan’s political repression. Sent to Damascus with the 5th Army to keep him away from the capital, he soon grew angry at how the local people were treated by the authorities. In this time, he joined the secret revolutionary group Vatan ve Hurriyet, Fatherland and Liberty, with a few of his fellow reformist army officers. A few years later, he was stationed in his hometown of Selanik where he resumed his political activism by joining the CUP, the Committee of Union and Progress, which was spearheading the Young Turk movement that opposed Sultan Abdulhamid’s government. The next year in 1908, the Young Turks Revolution took place and ushered in an era of a constitutional monarchy with a representative government that had initially been enacted in the 1876 Ottoman constitution. Enver Pasha became a leading figure in the movement; he would later emerge as a rival to Mustafa Kemal whose role in the Young Turks was not so prominent. In 1909, there was further political turmoil when an attempted counter revolution took place led by Islamists, who opposed the secularism of the CUP, and the Ottoman Liberal Party which disagreed with the absolutism of the CUP. The uprising was crushed and Abdulhamid II was forced to abdicate as Ottoman Sultan. This further cemented Enver’s political credentials which troubled Mustafa as he felt that the military shouldn’t interfere in politics. In 1911, Italy invaded Libya and Mustafa saw a chance to prove himself. Travelling there in disguise with other officers, Mustafa distinguished himself on the battlefield despite the Ottomans coming out on the losing end; he even received a wound to his left eye from the debris of a nearby building. When the First Balkan War broke out in October 1912, he was sent to the Gallipoli peninsula to defend the Dardanelle islands. The Ottomans would lose this war as well, losing much of its Balkan territories including his hometown Selanik to Greece. Mustafa’s mother and sister would then join him in Istanbul. The following year saw the outbreak of the Second Balkan War where the Ottomans regained Eastern Thrace from Bulgaria. After the conclusion of hostilities, Mustafa would join his former classmate Ali Fethi in Sofia after the latter was appointed ambassador to Bulgaria; whilst he would later be promoted to lieutenant colonel and served as part of the military attaché there. In Sofia, he fell in love with Dimitrina Kovacheva, the daughter of the Bulgarian General he had fought during the Balkans Wars. He asked his former foe for permission to marry his daughter twice but was rejected both times, apparently leaving Mustafa deeply hurt. In the summer of 1914, the First World War erupted in Europe and the Ottomans joined the side of Germany and Austria-Hungry. Mustafa was given command of the 19th Ottoman division which was stationed in the Gallipoli peninsula. Having prior experience in this region from the First Balkan War, he put this experience to good use when he defeated the Allied Powers’ campaign to capture the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915. Victory at Gallipoli made Ataturk a national hero and he was promoted to colonel. Subsequently he was sent to the Russian front where he was given command of the XVI corps and later the Ottoman Second Army in the Caucasus front. In August 1916, Mustafa mounted a successful counteroffensive against the Russian army where he re-captured Bitlis and Mus from the Russian Empire. The Russian army would later withdraw in March 1917 after Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown in the Russian Revolution. It was while fighting the Russians that Mustafa would meet his future right hand man and successor Ismet Inonu. His exploits were rewarded when he reached the rank of General and was given the title of Pasha. His military prowess and achievements had made him invaluable for the Ottoman high command, who re-stationed him in Syria in order to repel the British advance from Egypt. Given command of the Seventh Army, Mustafa was shocked by the state of the army defending the province. So he wrote a report to Grand Vizier Talat Pasha regarding the dismal situation but his observations were ignored, leading him to resign his post. In 1918, he was then tasked with accompanying the Crown Prince Mehmed Vahididden to Germany, where after surveying the German lines on the Western Front he concluded that the Central Powers would soon lose the war. On the return trip of the diplomatic visit, he received medical treatment in Austria for recurring physical problems relating to his kidney that would go on to afflict him for many years. When the Crown Prince Mehmed ascended the throne in July of that year, he called upon Mustafa Kemal to take command of the Seventh Army in Palestine once again. Seeing that the situation was hopeless, he withdrew his men northward towards Anatolia to evade the British from enveloping his forces. The Middle Eastern Front in the First World War came to an end in October 1918 with the signing of the Mudros Armistice. In the end, the Three Pashas who led the government throughout the war all fled into exile; leaving Sultan Mehmed VI in charge of a state that was forced to cooperate with the Allied Powers. The Allied troops immediately entered Istanbul where they established a military administration, marking the first time since 1453 that control of the city changed hands. This occupation of their territory and the subsequent Allied plans to partition Anatolia between them helped provide the spark for the Turkish National Movement which was determined to expel the foreign powers. It was in the subsequent Turkish War of Independence that through his leadership of the nationalist resistance movement, Mustafa Kemal would become Ataturk, father of the Turks. Before WWI had even finished, the Allied powers had designs on splitting Ottoman territory in the Middle East amongst them. In the aftermath of the war, the Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain and France in 1916 was broadly enacted to give control of Syria to the French; whilst the British were allocated Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq. Similar plans were made for Anatolia, the Ottoman heartland. In the east, there was to be an independent Armenia as well as a potential Kurdish state and much of the south-eastern quarter of it would come under French influence. Whilst in the west, Eastern Thrace and territory around Izmir was given to Greece, at the same time much of western Anatolia fell under the influence of Italy. And Istanbul and the Dardanelle Straits became a demilitarized zone under international control. Across Anatolia, all Ottoman military units were to lay down their weapons and demobilise. It’s within this context that Mustafa Kemal arrived in Istanbul towards the end of 1918. Witnessing the city’s occupation by the Allies, he was not alone in harbouring resentment towards the foreign military presence on Turkish territory. Throughout Anatolia, Ottoman army units refused to demobilise and local paramilitary groups were being formed to resist the occupation. The local resistance worried the Allies so much that they pressured the Ottoman government to restore order. Mustafa would get his chance to act when he was dispatched at the head of the Third Army by the Sultan to crush these uprisings. In this role, he was given considerable power to restore the defunct authority of the Ottoman state. But the Sultan’s authority was a facade, most Turks were aware that by this point he had been reduced to a puppet by the Allies. Mustafa was well aware of this too; so when he landed with his army at Samsun in May 1919, he immediately set about to initiate his plan of ending the foreign presence in Turkish lands. Having resigned from the Ottoman army, he was dismissed by the government and orders were issued for his arrest. Among the military cadre, he was not alone in supporting the resistance; General Kazim Karabekir had refused the British order to demobilise his XV Army in Eastern Anatolia. Mustafa subsequently linked up with Karabekir in the eastern city of Erzerum, where the Turkish nationalist movement held a congress. There it was decided that due to his competence and commitment to the cause, Mustafa Kemal was to be the leader of the resistance. The Erzurum Congress also produced the Misak-i Milli, the National Pact which set out the aims of the Nationalist movement. The Pact revolved largely around the issue of sovereignty, affirming that the frontiers of the Turkish nation were inviolable and that its independence was to be upheld against foreign occupation. In keeping with the focus on sovereignty, the National Pact also revoked the Ottoman capitulations. Historically, these were economic concessions that the Sultan had made to certain European powers but by the 19th century had evolved into an instrument of imperialism, and it was even stretched to include the exemption of the Empire’s non-Muslim subjects from Ottoman Law. Given the prominence of nationalist ideas as well as the religious tensions that had been exacerbated when the Ottoman Empire’s Balkan territories broke away, considerations of the religious and ethnic makeup of a post-war Turkey were crucial for the Turkish nationalists. Later that year, the Turkish Nationalist Movement and the Ottoman government agreed to uphold the National Pact and a general election was called. Dominated by nationalists associated with the resistance, the newly elected parliament was to be convened early in 1920. But the Allies stepped in; seeing their position was threatened, they dissolved the parliament and forced the Sultan to convene a government that was hostile to the Nationalist movement. It was in this time that Ismet Inonu and Fevzi Cakmak fled Istanbul and joined the nationalist resistance. Mustafa Kemal and his associates now felt compelled to form the Grand National Assembly at Ankara in the Anatolian interior, far from the reach of the Allies. Kemal was elected as its President and it still remains the legislative body of Turkey to this day. In the summer of 1920, the Allies signed the Treaty of Sevres, officially carving up the Ottoman realm. Kemal and his cohorts immediately declared it invalid and as an affront to Turkish sovereignty. So they set about to overturn the Treaty’s stipulations by force; seeking to expel the Greeks from Anatolia and Thrace, whilst annexing territory from the nascent Armenian state in the east. With the latter aim, they had enthusiastic support from the Bolsheviks of Russia who were engaged in their own civil war at the time. The Bolsheviks sought to partition the new Armenian state between themselves and Kemal’s nationalists; so during the course of the Turkish War of Independence they sent vital supplies of Gold and armaments to Kemal’s forces. By December 1920, General Karabekir’s forces had recaptured most of the territory in the South Caucasus that had been under Ottoman control prior to the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. With the Armenians no longer being a problem, Kemal could now focus on the Western Front with the Greeks. Already throughout 1920, the Turks had fought and defeated the French, who incorporated large numbers of Armenians in their army, on the Cilician front in the south. The fighting with the Greeks was the most intense of the war. With British backing, Greece had further expanded its Anatolian territories further inland after a summer and autumn offensive in 1920. But with the conclusion of hostilities on the Eastern and Southern Fronts, the Turks could focus all their energy on pushing Greece out of Anatolia. Kemal’s forces won a key victory at the First Battle of Inonu in January 1921, after his right hand man Ismet Inonu had re-organised the irregular militias into a disciplined army. Still the Greeks made a concerted effort to push their advance further east during their summer offensive. At the Battle of Kutahya-Eskishehr, the Greeks broke through the Turkish lines of resistance and forced them to withdraw beyond the Sakarya River. This was the last line of defence for the Turkish nationalists; Kemal’s government in Ankara was now in existential danger. Seeing the dismissal situation, the Grand National Assembly replaced Inonu with Mustafa Kemal as commander-in-chief of the Turkish forces. At the pivotal Battle of Sakarya, fighting raged on for 3 weeks in August and September along a battle line that stretched 100 km. In the end, the Greeks were forced to give up on delivering the knockout blow and retreated further west beyond the Sakarya River. For the next year, a stalemate existed between the two sides. By now, divisions within the Allies were emerging. The French and Italians had already negotiated with the Turks and there were even rumours that they were materially supporting the Turkish National Movement. So they called for an armistice but Kemal was aware that his side now held the strategic advantage. So he prepared for a final assault to expel the Greeks from Anatolia. Termed as the Great Offensive, the Turkish army launched its biggest operation of the war; during August and September, the Greek army was completely defeated and pushed back to the Aegean Sea. The re-capture of Izmir was a jubilant occasion for the Turkish army, but it was marred by the destruction that ensued in the days after its liberation. A fire broke out that blazed for more than a week, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, mostly Greeks and Armenians. Who was responsible has not been determined but many have pointed the finger at Turkish soldiers. With the Allies recognising the changed political landscape and the Turkish nationalists having achieved their major aims, an Armistice was signed in October 1922 and brought about the end of hostilities. The issues of control over Istanbul and Eastern Thrace were handled without force, although the British did come close to attacking the Turkish nationalists. Despite their strategic victories, the British still expected the Turkish nationalists to make some concessions in the post-war negotiations. To their alarm, Ismet Inonu, the Grand National Assembly’s chosen representative, demanded the fulfilment of the National Pact. During the intense diplomacy at Lausanne, a treaty was finally reached in July 1923. The Republic of Turkey’s sovereignty and the Grand National Assembly as its legitimate government were recognised by the international community. Turkish demands for the city of Mosul in Mesopotamia, based on the many Turks that lived there, were to be decided by the League of Nations later on in 1926, when Mustafa Kemal’s government would renounce their claims in exchange for a 10% stake in Mosul’s oil deposits. The Straits around Istanbul were to be returned to Turkish control but open to international commerce at all times. During the course of the negotiations, Greece and Turkey had realised that the two groups could no longer live together in cooperation, despite Muslims inhabiting Greece for 500 years and Greeks living in Anatolia for thousands of years. Subsequently, a population exchange took place which saw the transfer of almost half a million Muslims from Greece and 1.5 million Anatolian Greeks from Turkey. On October 29th 1923, the Republic of Turkey was declared, with Mustafa Kemal as its first President. A year before this, the Grand National Assembly had voted to abolish the Ottoman Sultanate in November 1922. Now, with independence assured, Kemal could work to enact a political vision for the Republic of Turkey that would give it a very different identity to its Ottoman predecessor. No longer consumed by the thought of a war, the Turkish Nationalist Movement quickly moved to mould the country according to its political vision. Perhaps the best way to understand Ataturk’s presidency and his political vision is to go through the Six Arrows, the official ideology of the new Republic, and see how each one interplays with the various reforms he introduced. Republicanism - This emphasised the liberty of citizens and the idea of popular sovereignty, which stated that the Turkish people were the source of political power and the authority of the government & state were rooted in the consent of its people. But in reality, Ataturk’s government was hardly representative. The Kemalist Republican People’s Party held power in what essentially became a one-party state. In many ways, the Kemalist vision was enforced on the Turkish people without asking for their say so. This took place despite there being contrarian opinions within the Grand National Assembly. Even in 1924, a breakaway party, the Progressive Republican Party, was formed by some of Ataturk’s closest associates, including General Karabekir. The disaffected members agreed in principle with Kemalism but wanted a slightly more conservative approach to socio-cultural change. In 1930, Ataturk asked his long-time friend Ali Fethi Okyar to form a new party so that a multiparty system could be inaugurated once again. Both occasions resulted in the same thing - Ataturk forced both parties to dissolve because he feared that the opening up of political power would be used by the forces of conservatism, especially the Islamists, to undo or even delay the modernist-inclined reforms intended by the government. Populism - “Ne mutlu Turkum diyene!” - “How happy is the one who says I’m a Turk!” - Ataturk was particularly fond of this phrase and it helps to explain his views on Populism too. This concept aimed to shift political power to the Turkish citizenry and asserted that national identity came before everything else. In this sense it was pitted against the Sufi Tariqas and Islamic Madrassa’s; with both being institutions that believed in a higher power, therefore placing Islam above the nation. The desire to subsume potential rival strands of thought under the umbrella of the state also saw Madrassas come under the supervision of the Ministry of Education. This particular issue had been most obviously addressed with the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in March 1924. The political functions of the Sultanate had already been abolished in 1922, but the fact that Caliph Abdulmejid II still held the prestige associated with his office was seen by the Kemalists as potentially undermining the authority of the government because it placed another institution above the nation and state. As surprising as it may sound today, when Ataturk first came to power there were some Turks who believed they’d have a political system that was closer to one created by the first Caliphs in the 7th century. The following Kemalist principle would show them just how wrong they were. Laicism - Contrary to some softer forms of secularism which deal largely with separating religion and governance, laicism called for religion to be relegated to the private instead of the public sphere. In this sense, religion was discouraged from not only getting involved in government affairs, its role was to be undermined in society as well - this created the foundation block for much of the social reforms Ataturk would introduce. Of course, this was very different from the centuries old Ottoman model which relied heavily on Shariah law to guide its legal matters. Already in the Tanzimat and Second Constitutional Era, Ottoman statesmen had tried to wean themselves off a religiously inspired political model. But Ataturk kicked that process into another gear; closing down Sufi lodges, abolishing the Caliphate, shutting down Sharia courts, replacing the Ottoman-era position of Sheikh ul-Islam, the person responsible for religious matters, with the newly established Directorate of Religious Affairs which came under the direct supervision of the government. The Ottoman legal code, the Mejelle, which was based off the Shariah, was abandoned in favour of a blend of different European legal codes that were imported. The day of rest was changed from the traditional Friday to Sunday, yet again mirroring Europe. Wearing the fez was banned in 1925 as part of Ataturk’s so-called “Hat Revolution”; because of its attachment to the Ottomans, the fez was viewed as symbol of backwardness - something which is fascinating since the rationale for the fez’s introduction in the 1820s was that it replaced the turban and symbolised the Ottomans desire to modernise. Sartorial changes were continued in 1934 when a law was passed which banned wearing religious clothing outside places of worship. In 1928, there was an amendment to the Constitution which removed Islam as the State religion altogether. It is important to try to understand why Ataturk’s outlook on political Islam was so antagonistic. For him and many other reformers, the Ottoman decline could be explained through their lack of desire to keep up with the rapid modernisation pursued by European powers. As a result, reliance upon Islam in the political and cultural sphere was interpreted by Ataturk as an obstacle to progress, and as a weapon of dogma and ignorance. During the 19th and 20 centuries, reformers in the Islamic world across the ideological spectrum had grappled with this issue; with two main school of thoughts emerging - there were the Islamists and Modernists. Ataturk was clearly from the latter, but it should be noted that the Islamists also expressed dismay at the way in which Islam was being utilised as a socio-political force, with many great thinkers such as Sheikh Muhammad Abduh berating the ignorance which had spread across the Dar al-Islam and allowed European imperialism to triumph. But their solution was to get back to a better and more accurate understanding of Islam; instead of moving away from it and towards the European-styled cultural reforms that the modernists such as Ataturk favoured. Nationalism - The Kemalist view of nationalism rested heavily on civic nationhood. This puts forth the idea that a nation is defined by its political institutions and liberal values which are to be upheld by its citizens. Civic nationalism is often contrasted with ethnic nationalism, which defines the nations in terms of ethnicity, in a similar vein to Pan-Turkism. Herein lays a contradiction between Kemalist theory and practise, because Ataturk’s views clearly drew inspiration from ethnic nationalism too - Turkish culture and history were pedestalised above the identities of the other minorities in the country. The Turkish Historical Society was established in 1931 to explore the great heritage left behind by Turkic cultures in the past. The institution was regarded by some as a mouthpiece for Kemalism; which makes sense considering their endorsement of the Turkish History Thesis, which posits the idea that Turks had moved from their ancestral homeland in Central Asia and brought civilisation wherever they went. This assumption went hand in hand with an even more farfetched idea known as the Sun Language Theory, which argued that all human languages were descendants of an original Turkic language. Ataturk’s notion of nationality encouraged his citizens to view being Turk as a legal term expressing their citizenship of Turkey as opposed to an ethnic designation. All the ethnic groups living inside of Turkey were to think of themselves as Turks and Turks only. Whilst this may seem harmless and even inclusive on the surface, in practise this represented an attack on the identities of the Circassians, Greeks and numerous other minorities. All these groups were forced to go through a process of Turkification, whereby they’d be forcefully assimilated as Turks. One ethnic group has particularly suffered from Ataturk’s vision of a nation - and that’s the Kurds, the largest ethnic minority in the country. Constituting up to 20% of the population, they make up a majority in many of Turkey’s eastern provinces. Throughout the 1920s and 30s, thousands of Kurds in the East were forcefully deported to other areas of Anatolia whilst Turks were also settled in Kurdish regions, in an effort to undermine the infrastructure of Kurdish society. Ataturk was convinced that in order for the nation to be stable and unified, ethnic and cultural distinctions had to be done away with in the search for a unitary political and cultural identity for Turkey. So the Kurds saw their customs and identity come under direct attack; the Kurdish language was banned in the public sphere, deportations were used & the secular policies of the Kemalist government was internalised by many Kurds as an attack on their traditional Islamic values. Not willing to simply accept the denial of their identity, the 1920s and 30s witnessed three large-scale uprisings in the eastern provinces. There was the Sheikh Said Rebellion of 1925; the Ararat Rebellion of 1927 to 1930 and the Dersim Rebellion in 1937. All of them caused major concern for the government in Ankara and were only put down with significant effort and resources from the Turkish army. Reformism - This placed emphasis on the need to replace the traditional institutions and values with modern ones. As a result of Ataturk’s obsessive focus on modernity, Turkey was going to be actively modified by reform in order to be the most effective it could be. Naturally, this necessitated a very acrimonious break from the past. In truth however, this break was not as radical as it seems - from the 1830s onwards, there was lively discourse on a wide-range of socio-political reforms in the late Ottoman political scene. The Tanzimat period, an era which lasted from 1839 to 1876, was distinguished by numerous liberal reforms intended to stop the collapse of the Empire and help it compete with other European powers. This has forced many observers to question whether Ataturk was really as revolutionary as he first seems. Many of his most famous reforms had precursors in the late Ottoman period. Whether it was clothing reforms or linguistic ones. Even the legal system had weaned off its Sharia-dependency. Whilst this is all true, the point still stands that the pace and intensity with which Ataturk pursued his reforms was certainly revolutionary. Within the space of 15 years, Ataturk had changed some of the most basic foundations of Turkish society that had been in place for hundreds of years. A vital difference between Ataturk and the late Ottoman reformers seems to have been this: Tanzimat reformers knew that Western powers were technologically and materially superior to them and therefore they had to adopt certain Western ideals which suited them. But the Ottoman reformers still maintained a sense of confidence in their cultural superiority to the West. Ataturk, however, seemingly rejected this. He viewed Western social and cultural standards as being better than the ones that had been in place during the Ottoman Caliphate. This can also explain why he brought changes so quickly because he felt there had to be a sense of genuine urgency for Turkish society to reform, in order to survive in the new international order that was being carved up by Western powers after WWI. As a result, Ataturk viewed it as necessary to portray the Ottomans as backwards for his political vision. Some of the well-known changes he introduced were justified by the Kemalist principle of Reformism. Perhaps the most famous of these include his reform of the alphabet. Viewing the traditional Arabic script of Ottoman Turkish as too complex and faced with a population that was largely illiterate, in 1928 Ataturk sponsored the introduction of a new alphabet for the Turkish language that was to use the Latin script. He would follow this up with further language reforms via the Turkish Language Association which sought to replace Arabic and Persian loanwords with Turkish equivalents. Within society, he disagreed with the traditional segregation of genders that many Islamic societies upheld; instead viewing women’s involvement in public affairs as essential. He passed numerous legislations that sought to equalise men and women’s role in society in line with European customs; such as granting full political rights to women in 1934. That same year the Surname Law was introduced which required all citizens of Turkey to adopt a fixed hereditary surname. This is when he was given the name Ataturk. Done with the intention to modernise the country bureaucratically, this could also foster a sense of Turkishness within society, as all names related to other ethnicities were prohibited and forced to adopt Turkish renditions of them. Statism - The state was to have an important role in regulating the economy of the country. Turkey’s economy at the start of the Republic was very underdeveloped. Almost a decade of constant war had severely damaged its financial infrastructure. The Ottoman Empire’s debt to European creditors was still unpaid, so the new government inherited that. Seeing their hopes of gaining the city of Mosul and its oil rich fields dashed, the Kemalists saw the need for the state’s involvement in jumpstarting the economy. This problem became especially pronounced in the aftermath of the Great Depression that shook the world. Despite these issues, Turkey’s economy, both in the agricultural and industrial sectors, grew massively as a result of Ataturk’s five year economic plans. Ataturk can be a confusing person to understand - he favoured a representative parliamentary democracy but enacted a one-party state; he championed empiricism but supported wild delusional ideas such as the Sun Language Theory; he rejected ethnic nationalism but indirectly sponsored it. I’ve found what helps me to understand Ataturk’s views and actions is the term Sovereignty. Throughout the course of his life, his homeland had been at the prey of other powers - the decaying of the Ottoman state then the War of Independence. As President, he shifted his attention to ensuring that the internal infrastructure of Turkey was sufficiently strong enough to withstand shocks and bring about a degree of stability that could then be used as a platform for progress, which in turn would further strengthen the nation-state and continue to insulate its sovereignty from internal and external threats. Upon his death in November 1938, he left in his wake a young but assertive nation that has in some ways became a beacon of progress and strength in the Middle East. Having said that though, Turkey today finds itself having to answer unresolved issues regarding its identity; specifically its relationship with Islam and how that clashes with its notion of progress and modernity. After he died, the presidency fell to his right hand man Ismet Inonu. It was under his stewardship that Turkey would transition to a multi-party political system in 1945. This development seemingly vindicated Ataturk’s initial concerns as it proved to be a traumatic one. For the next 50 years or so, Turkish politics saw a familiar pattern of a civilian government followed by interventions from the military, who viewed themselves as the purveyors of Ataturk’s vision for Turkey. At the same time, from the late 1970s onwards, the government in Ankara had to deal with a Kurdish insurgency that grew out of discontent amongst the Kurds, who had fallen victims to Kemalism. More recently, Turkey has moved away from its Kemalist roots under the Presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who among other things, wants to infuse Islam firmly back into Turkish public life. In the future, we will see whether Ataturk’s secular nationalist vision for Turkey will survive.