"David Warren • Longing for Ataturk
David Warren, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Wednesday, July 25, 2007
There was nothing fey about Mustafa Kemal Pasa, a.k.a. Ataturk, the founder of post-Ottoman Turkey. Neither in his seizure of power, nor in what he did with it, was the man inclined to shrink from difficulties. An articulate and complex man (I have not been able to find a biography of him that makes him truly plausible), he was able to guide his independence movement as much ideologically as tactically, then shape the emerging Turkish republic to his own desires. Partly he did this by making himself, through his eloquence, the author of his own legend, and through that legend he personified, long after his death, what he wanted his countrymen to become."
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