'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title. (Apr.)Ĭopyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. Mango gives a rounded, finely detailed portrait of the man who created modern Turkey.

Mango's admiration for Ataturk doesn't keep him from displaying the dictator's arrogance, ruthlessness and authoritarianism his Turkish expertise enables him to flesh out Ataturk's complex life via sources he translated himself. That so much of his legacy survives is evidence of his success. It is a fascinating story and one that throws light on other matters of great importance today-resurgent nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and the reality of. Ataturk abolished the monarchy, divided WWI's victors bent on partitioning all of Turkey, defeated rapacious Greeks intent on expanding their expatriate communities in Asia and destroyed or co-opted his domestic rivals. Andrew Mangos portrait of Ataturk reveals a man who, while responsible for some of his countrys ills, also transformed the republic from a battle-scarred ruin into a regional power. Few leaders have so modernized an ancient society, instituting radical changes in dress, religion, government, education-even the alphabet. Mango (a retired BBC expert on Turkey and author of three previous books on the country) gives this man, one of the least-known nation-builders of the last century, full treatment, from his earliest days to his ascension to power and his death, from cirrhosis at the age of 57.

For himself, he adopted Ataturk, literally Father Turk. A decade later, still trying to structure an identity for what remained of the polyglot, ramshackle Ottoman Empire, he decreed-as virtual dictator of a nation now largely populated by Muslims-that inhabitants had to take surnames. All were identical: the features were those of Mustafa Kemal (1881-1938), an army officer who had salvaged the core of defeated Turkey after the 1914-1918 war to create a secular republic.

In 1923, reports Mango, a satirical magazine ran a cartoon showing the three faces of Turkey-the nation, the assembly and the government.

Andrew mango ataturk