Ataturk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey
by Andrew Mango

List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: from $3.10 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

or

Compare Prices for Ataturk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey

Book Summary Information

• ISBN13: 9781585673346
• Condition: USED - Very Good
• Notes: 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Book Reviews of Ataturk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey

Book Review: A Man, A Vision, A Country
Summary: 5 Stars

Mango narrates with mastery the steady progress that Atatürk, a successful and popular student, made during his military education. Work was all that mattered to Atatürk. Atatürk became a politically savvy professional soldier while studying hard during his years of military education in Istanbul, the imperial capital. After his admission to the prestigious Staff College at 21, Atatürk kept in touch with his military friends who were assigned elsewhere, a circle that would reveal its greatest usefulness in the accession of Atatürk to the highest post of Modern Turkey two decades later. Because of his subversive political activities, Atatürk was assigned not to Europe but to the Near East after finishing his studies in 1904. Mango does a great job in giving background information, which helps readers understand the environment in which Atatürk was bound to as a soldier while he actively remained involved in politics through his connections in the empire before, during and after WWI. In 1908, the Society of Union and Progress, of which Atatürk became a member, served as the launching path for the Young Turks in their successful military coup. Atatürk understood very fast that the Young Turks, even with the help of Germany later on, were not up to the task to save the empire from its ultimate downfall after the end of WWI. Atatürk was still too junior to play a key role in the new administration. As usual, Atatürk was critical of the new ones on top because he alone deserved to be leader.

From 1911, Atatürk, still an obscure officer, progressively rose to preeminence. Atatürk first tried to quell rebellions in the disintegrating empire before WWI. Atatürk then illustrated his military superiority when he decisively helped ruin the allied venture at Gallipoli in 1915. After a new promotion in 1916, Atatürk, very resentful of the Germans for continuously meddling into military operations from the beginning, spent two agitated years in the Near East where he did what he could to slow down the advance of the allies until the end of WWI. Officers who ultimately played a key role in the War of Independence were placed under his command during these two years. After the armistice in 1918, Atatürk proved to be the most effective of all Ottoman officers who refused the diktats of the victorious allies and thwarted their efforts to carve up the territory of Modern Turkey into pieces. Mango clearly explained how with the help of other nationalist officers, Atatürk turned Anatolia into a redoubt of resistance while accommodating the decadent rule of the sultan in the short term. Atatürk also progressively centralized all military and political levers of power in his hands through shrewd maneuvering. Mango is brutally honest about the enlightened despotism of Atatürk. Modern Turkey needed a strong regime to impose its legitimacy both internally and externally.

It took Atatürk and his army several grueling years before they could finally defeat the Greeks militarily and thereby commanding the grudging respect of the remaining divided allies. The signature of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 was a personal triumph for Atatürk by making the humiliating Treaty of Sevres of 1920 associated with the discredited old regime almost totally obsolete. As George Curzon, a British imperial statesman, noted at the end of the conference: "Hitherto we have dictated our peace treaties. Now we are negotiating one with an enemy who has an army while we have none, an unheard of position." The Treaty of Lausanne, still in existence, has been the most successful and the most lasting of all the post-war treaties. Atatürk was 42 years old when he became the first president of Modern Turkey. He assumed this position until his premature death in 1938. Mango never bores his audience when he overviews the successful and not-so-successful revolutionary reforms that Atatürk enacted during the successive terms of his presidency. Unsurprisingly, Modern Turks still revere Atatürk for westernizing and modernizing at high speed their country at its creation in 1923.

In present times, the adhesion of Turkey and United Cyprus to the European Union should be a fitting tribute to western-bound Kemalism. In addition, this adhesion should help engineer a historic reconciliation between Greece and Turkey, two key U.S. allies. On top of that, Turkey is called to play a key role as a bridge between the European Union and a would-be Islamic Union. Turkey has been an anchor of stability for over 80 years in the most volatile region of the world and has demonstrated with a growing success how to marry democracy, economic liberalism and Islam with one another. Unsurprisingly, Islamic terrorists have had Turkey on their hitting list for this reason.

Historical Books

• Books > Subjects > Biographies & Memoirs
• Leaders & Notable People > Political
• People, A-Z > ( A ) > Ataturk
• Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Motivational
• History > Asia > Turkey