Word: atat
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...that country's first President, Atatürk steered resolutely westward, implementing radical reforms. He removed all references to Islamic Shari'a law from the statutes, introduced a Swiss-based legal code, abolished religious education in schools, introduced women's rights and changed the alphabet from Arabic to Latin...
...After his death in 1938 (of liver disease, believed to be caused by heavy drinking), the reform program he had enacted - most important, secularism and the concept of a monoethnic state - became an official ideology called Kemalism. It is enshrined in the constitution as an inviolable founding principle. Atatürk's mausoleum in Ankara has become a hallowed place for his followers. Last year hundreds of thousands of secularists staged an antigovernment rally in front...
...Filmmaker Dundar, a well-known secularist, says he is shocked by the criticism. "I'm being lynched," he said in an interview in daily Hurriyet. "Now I know what a taboo is." At the film's premiere, he said he wanted to "show a more real Atatürk - a man who fought difficulties, loved women, who made mistakes, who was sometimes scared and achieved things." (See pictures of movie posters...
...film is a big draw. "Why shouldn't this man, who transformed an entire country, enjoy raki, like dancing, miss his mother or not like sleeping in the dark?" asks pop singer Nil Karaibrahimgil. "Do these [facts] change what he did or diminish it? Being introduced to Mustafa made Atatürk even more of a hero in my eyes." Some 800,000 people have seen Mustafa so far - more than the latest James Bond movie - proving perhaps that taking on Turkey's taboos is no longer quite so scary...
...Read a TIME cover story on Atat...