Ataturk’s image
A secularist’s lament
The cult of Ataturk may be slowly weakening
Feb 25th 2012 | ANKARA | from the print edition
Statue with feet of clay?
EVERY November 10th, at 9.05am precisely, sirens wail, the traffic stops and pedestrians stand in silence to pay their respects to Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, who died at that time in 1938. A military hero who rescued Turkey at the end of the first world war, Ataturk invented a new identity from the old Ottoman empire. It was Ataturk’s embrace of rigid secularism and Western reforms that underlay Turkey’s recovery.
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