When
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk became the first president of Turkey in 1923, he
set about transforming his country into a secular republic where
nationalism sanctified by science--and by the personality cult Ataturk
created around himself--would reign supreme as the new religion. This
book provides the first in-depth look at the intellectual life of the
Turkish Republic's founder. In doing so, it frames him within the
historical context of the turbulent age in which he lived, and explores
the uneasy transition from the late Ottoman imperial order to the modern
Turkish state through his life and ideas. Shedding light on one of the
most complex and enigmatic statesmen of the modern era, M. Sukru
Hanioglu takes readers from Ataturk's youth as a Muslim boy in the
volatile ethnic cauldron of Macedonia, to his education in nonreligious
and military schools, to his embrace of Turkish nationalism and the
modernizing Young Turks movement. Who was this figure who sought glory
as an ambitious young officer in World War I, defied the victorious
Allies intent on partitioning the Turkish heartland, and defeated the
last sultan? Hanioglu charts Ataturk's intellectual and ideological
development at every stage of his life, demonstrating how he was
profoundly influenced by the new ideas that were circulating in the
sprawling Ottoman realm. He shows how Ataturk drew on a unique mix of
scientism, materialism, social Darwinism, positivism, and other theories
to fashion a grand utopian framework on which to build his new nation.