Ataturk The Rebirth of a Nation by Patrick Kinross 1964 499p
- Born in 1881 in Salonika, the area called Rumeli under the Ottomans he was one of 5 children., This was a port with a cosmopolitan population , Turk, Greek, Slav , Vitch , Albanian, Moslems , Christians and Jews.. His mother was a Turkish Moslem, his father was blue eyed perhaps of Slav or Albanian origin and a clerk in the customs office. It is considered that part of his family came from Donmeh these had been Jews who followed the false messiah Shavatai Tsvi and converted to Islam and had remained a district community for years. .
- Initially his mother insisted he go to a Moslem Clerical School where they sat cross legged on the floor learning to write Arabic calligraphy on their knees. After a few days he got up and refused to sit on the floor. His father took him to a secular school. For High School he had seen the kids in Military Uniform and with the help of a neighbor a soldier wrote the entrance exam and got into the Military High School here he learned military matters , history , economics philosophy, French and he aspired in mathematics .where his teacher gave him the name Kamel ( perfection) This school was composed of all social classes and you could rise on merit alone. At the station a group of dervishes arrived singing and dancing in their robes , their spirit was affecting the people around them Kamel saw this a privative religious fanatics' and was ashamed of it.
- When he got to Constantinople to do officer training he saw the southern city Stambul was poor Moslems while the north was Pera with wealthy Christians and foreigners who had a hold on the Ottoman Empire and the Turks were no longer masters of their own affairs as the Ottomans were in deep debt from the time of the1854 Crimean War. With his friend Ali Fuad the worked on their French and studied the French literature that was banned in military cadets. Aged 23 in 1902 he graduated with the rank of Captain. Because the political views of Kemal and a group of friends they were arrested. After they were released they were sent to the peripheral Provinces.
- As a cavalry officer based in Damascus, they had to control the Druse who had been forced to pay taxes in return for not being conscripted to the army. Kemal discovered that on the pretext of gathering arrears in taxes the troops, looted these villages. When it came to dividing the spoils Kemal said " do you want to be a man of today or tomorrow" The pacification of the Druse must be sought by skill and diplomacy not by bribery. When he saw singing and dancing he discovered it was Italians working on the Hejaz railways. In Damascus he felt imprisoned but Beirut with foreigners there was night life. with the support of friends he formed the Fatherland Society with a branch in Jaffa. Later on this became known as the Young Turks. They wanted to depose the Sultan and liberal constitution and a Turkish nationalist state. 1908 Within 3 months of declaring a constitution Bulgaria declared independence. Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina and Crete joined Greece.
- The Committee found Kemal a nuisance and sent him off to Libya to investigate the situation there. On the way stopping in Sicily children mocked the fez and Kemal decided that he has to away with that. In visiting Bengasi he found that there was a power struggle by the Ottoman authority and a local chief. He arranged to lead the Ottoman troops there on an exercise and after drilling a while took them to surround the chief, who immediately capitulated and gave Kemal what was demanded.
- When Abdul Hamid introduced professional German soldiers to train the army Kemal as a patriot disliked this even though he appreciated their worth. He said that greatness is deciding what the country need and getting it and not pandering to an applause. He realized that Islam was against democracy.
- In Libya the Italians had invaded and held all the coastal towns Kemal was sent to see what could be done. He had to arrive secretly on a Russian ship and made his way inland to the Ottoman army in the desert from where he realized they were in an impossible position, could not be supplied, but at this stage he was needed for the Balkan wars. Where Macadonia and Rumelia had already fallen and his mother had already fled from Salonica.
The Turkish army was regenerated by the Germans with the result that Turkey joined WW1 on Germany's side, making her a German satellite. With WW! the German Colonel von Cress led Turkish troops to cross the Suez Canal and were badly beaten back by the British who were prepared for this was a warning to the British.
Gallipoli Notes here
The Hero of Gallipoli was back and again there Government wanted to send him away and so he was sent to accompany the Crown Prince and his brother on a tour of Germany. This gave him a chance to tell them his views . He was able to have long discussions with van Ludendorff and von Hindenburg. He was taken on a conducted tour of the Western front but figured out the truth. Later back home when he met friends he told them that Germany had lost the war and urged Constantinople to sign a separate peace.
He was sent to Palestine and arriving there realized the war there was lost in advance the best troops had been sent by the Germans to the Caucasus. All that was left for him to do was organize an orderly retreat and get the troop to Aleppo.
The Ottomans were an Empire no longer the Balkan Wars had deprived them of European territory. Now they had lost the Arab province. Kemal was not really against this as it brought closer the development of the Turkish Nation
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- By the time of Ataturk's death Turkey had a new alphabet, new civil code, universal suffrage, a new state religion, and secularism to go along with Islam.
- The last political act he did was getting the French to succeed the Hatay region from French Syria to Turkey He died on 10 November 1938 at Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul aged 57. he died of cirrhosis of the liver. This was 15 years after he had declared the Turkish Republic in 1923 Oct 29th. He was succeeded by his long time PM İsmet İnönü.
- During WW2 Turkey remained neutral thus blocking Germanys access to the Arab oil world and Allied aid reaching the Soviet Union via the Bosporus
- The Turks were the only one of the Central Powers able to overturn immediately the vindictive settlements imposed by the Allies following World War I. Because Turkish resistance ultimately was led to success by Mustafa Kemal, it long has been assumed that he created it as well. He did, indeed, do more than anyone else to create the Turkish Republic on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, but he accomplished this by bringing together elements of resistance that had already emerged. He coordinated their efforts, expressed their goals, personified their ambitions, and led them to victory.
Turkish war of Independance .The National Resistance Forces
Resistance appeared from the first days of the occupation while Mustafa Kemal still was in Cilicia. It came initially from within the Istanbul government itself, where many of the officials organized the secret Outpost Society (Karakol Cemiyeti) shortly after the armistice and used their positions to thwart the Allied demands as well as to send arms and ammunition to Anatolia. Small boats were loaded in the capital in the cover of darkness and sent out into the Aegean and the Black Sea to deliver their valuable cargoes. There is considerable evidence that Talat Paşa himself stimulated the first resistance movements in Thrace before fleeing the country and that resistance in Istanbul was organized within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When Mustafa Kemal, Kâzim Karabekir, and other leading officers returned to Istanbul to protest the demobilization orders, they were warmly received by the sultan and others and appointed to important positions in the areas remaining under direct Ottoman authority, where they could lead opposition almost under the noses of the Allies.
- Comparing Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Lee Kuan Yew of Singepore — two of the most transformative leaders of the 20th century — reveals striking parallels and fundamental differences. Both were nation-builders who shaped their countries through strong leadership, visionary reforms, and a focus on modernization, but they did so in very different historical, cultural, and geopolitical contexts.
