ŞERAFETTİN TURAN, Mustafa Kemâl Atatürk: Kendine Özgü Bir Yaşam ve Kişilik, Ankara, Bilgi, 2004, 719 pp. [Kitap Tanıtımı]

Abstract

Lord Kinross ends his celebrated standard biography of Mustafa Kemâl Atatürk (Atatürk: The Birth of a Nation) as follows: "Turkey tost its lover." I belong to the Turkish generation which witnessed, not only the enthusiasm of creating a modern republic from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, but also felt the deep grief on account of his untimely loss at the age of 57 (1938) when the war clouds were gathering over Europe. As the British historian Arnold J. Toynbee had underlined in his various publications (such as A Study of History, the World and the West, and Turkey). Atatürk's policy was to aim at nothing short of an out-and-out conversion of the country to the Western way of life.