Today marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish republic, which emerged out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire as a sovereign, independent nation thanks in large part to the leadership of one man: Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Nine decades ago, too, a new American newsweekly had started shaking up New York\u2019s media scene. TIME\u2019s fourth-ever issue placed \u201cMustapha Kemal Pasha\u201d \u2014 he had yet to win his sobriquet \u201cAtaturk,\u201d or \u201cfather of the Turks\u201d \u2014 on its March 24 cover, hailing him as the \u201cEmancipator of Turkey\u201d who had \u201clifted the people out of the slough of servile submission to alien authority, brought them to a realization of their inherent qualities and to an independence of thought and action.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"mustafa-kemal-ataturk\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/mustafa-kemal-ataturk.jpg\")
From being an officer in the Ottoman army, Ataturk went on to marshal Turkish forces in the political mess that followed the empire\u2019s collapse at the end of World War I and preserve it from the predations of Western European empires. Here\u2019s what TIME wrote in 1923, as Turkey moved toward becoming a new republic:<\/p>\n
Kemal is pure Turk\u2026 and has proved to the whole world that he is the core of Modern Turkey. He is a fine type of professional soldier, who has earned his laurels by sticking to his calling. Professor Arnold J. Toynbee, in his admirably written book, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, says of him: \u201cHe proved by a personal demonstration that a Turk can be his own master in Anatolia without having to wait for a better world, and under his inspiration the National Movement sprang to life.\u201d Without doubt Mustapha Kemal Pasha is one of the great figures in contemporary history. He stands now against the unseen forces of Western civilization, determined to hold what Turkey has won.<\/p>\n
But as Turkey\u2019s first President, Ataturk went on to refashion a land that was once part of a sprawling, multi-ethnic empire along the lines of modern Western nation-states. Ataturk\u2019s militarist and secularist brand of nationalism would define Turkey \u2014 for good and for ill \u2014 for decades to come. No single 20th century statesman meant as much to his nation as he did; he remains, as TIME wrote 90 years ago, very much at the \u201ccore\u201d of the Turkish story.<\/p>\n
Ishaan Tharoor @ishaantharoor<\/p>\n
Ishaan Tharoor is a Senior Editor at TIME magazine and Editor of TIME World, based in New York City.<\/p>\n
via Remembering Atat\u00fcrk: Turkey\u2019s Founding Father Appeared on TIME\u2019s 4th Issue | TIME.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish republic, which emerged out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire as a sovereign, independent nation thanks in large part to the leadership of one man: Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Nine decades ago, too, a new American newsweekly had started shaking up New York\u2019s media […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":85985,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[13,4652],"class_list":["post-85983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-ataturk","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}