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Title: Ataturk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey by Andrew Mango ISBN: 1-58567-334-X Publisher: Overlook Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.16 (25 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Powerful, Unrivalled Achievement
Comment: Certainly, I am not the only Turk who feels indebted to Andrew Mango for his wonderful biography of a man whom the west could know more about. However, before reading this scholarly, thoroughly researched and authoritative book about Ataturk, those who are not familiar with the history of Ottoman Turkey could read as a primer Lord Kinross' "A History of the Ottoman Centuries".
In a gesture of gratitude, the Turkish Parliament in 1927 conferred on Mustafa Kemal the surname Ataturk which means "Father Turk". To this day, Turks revere Mustafa Kemal Ataturk because his vision, courage and leadership eventually saved the country from invasion and extinction as a nation. Ataturk's progressive reforms have allowed Turkey to develop into the modern nation it is today. Even his ardent critics in Turkey enjoy freedom today because of Ataturk's life long dedication and service for his country.
This book is a gem, a rich source of information about the life and times of Kemal Ataturk. Anyone who is interested in further understanding the character of this brilliant soldier, the architect of the Turkish Republic and a rare individual whose spirit is alive and well in Turkey today should read this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Timeless Statesman
Comment: Mango has done a great service by providing us all with this Biography. This book is bound to replace Kinross's classic as the ultimate reference for the international reader and historian.
To be sure, there is not much new information, as the life of this great man was investigated in great detail by many for decades. Still, the analysis is fresh, more details of the personal life emerge, and much more importantly, the events are related to most recent developments and trends in modern Turkish politics. Even modern Turks tend to forget how much of the Ottoman institutions have been carried over to the new Republic and how an Ottoman upbringing Ataturk had.
It is still remarkable and inspiring to seee one more time how this soldier, who spent most of his adult life soldiering and fighting to hold a crumbling empire together, also possessed and developed the qualifications and the skills to plan and lead a whole nation to modernity.
He was a genius in identifying the key elements that would define and bind the Turkish nation forever. It was not religion, race nor ethnicity. This was his real genius and what makes him timeless. Much of his ideals are as modern today as they were then.
One understands better why Turks have great reluctance to revise or update even some of his most outdated ideas and institutions since they had such good track record. Ideas and models that can not be directly attributed to him or to his day have great difficulty in taking hold, which is a serious problem for modern Turks also.
It is also important for the reader to realize that Military Schools were the only schools for higher education in Ottoman Empire. Almost all Muslim Ottoman elite wore uniforms. Military was the only profession most young Turks aspired to. This was very much the established Turkish culture for centuries. Almost all of Ataturk's close friends who shaped and led the new nation were military educated. This goes a long way explaining the very special role military plays today in Turkish politics and society. A lot of Westerners have great difficulty understanding this and make very wrong analogies sometimes.
Andrew Mango has used the original sources extensively. His knowledge and expertise of the topic is admirable. He did envision this to be a classic obviously. He has also done a very good job identifying in detail all the names and key characters that surrounded Ataturk on his epic journey from Sultan's loyal officer to Presidency of The Republic of Turkey. His biographical notes and chronology are extremely valuable additions to the book.
His final chapters were very well written and contain very good analysis.
May be a hard assignment for a reader who has no background on this subject but plenty of help is available in the book. It is a must for anyone who is even mildly interested in the topic or the area.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Man, A Vision, A Country
Comment: Andrew Mango first gives his readers an excellent introduction to the declining Ottoman Empire so that they better understand where Mustapha Kemal Atatürk was coming from. The Ottoman Realm, though modernizing slowly, no longer had the means to live up to its ambitions and was shrinking fast under pressure of competing empires and nascent states at the end of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, the Ottoman State was undermined internally by increasingly restive minorities that no longer accepted their subservient condition, as well as, by part of the elite that was dissatisfied with the perceived backwardness and incompetence of the Ottoman ruling class. Born in Salonica in today's Greece around 1880 in a Muslim, Turkish-speaking and middle-class family, Atatürk early on made up his mind to join the westernizing army and thereby discard the external signs of oriental life.
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.
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Title: Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds by Stephen Kinzer ISBN: 0374528667 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 04 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire by Lord Kinross ISBN: 0688080936 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 August, 1979 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: The Emergence of Modern Turkey by Bernard Lewis ISBN: 0195134605 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $28.95 |
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Title: Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern Turkey by Nicole Pope, Hugh Pope, Nichole Pope ISBN: 1585670960 Publisher: Overlook Press Pub. Date: 05 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Jefferson and Ataturk: Political Philosophies by Garrett Ward Sheldon ISBN: 0820449776 Publisher: Peter Lang Pub Inc Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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