Word: kemal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Sevres. The last British admiral boarded the last British battleship in the Bosporus, snapped a respectful salute to the crescent flag and steamed off. The most defeated of enemies became the first to defy the victorious Allies, to scrap one of their treaties. The Ataturk miracle had begun: Mustafa Kemal, soldier, was master of Turkey...
Only Turks. The nation he put back together was slightly larger than Texas-296,000 sq.mi.-its vast bulk nestled in Asia Minor, with 9,000 sq.mi. wedging into Europe's southeastern corner. Kemal was satisfied. "We are now Turks-only Turks," he exulted. He wanted none of the old overextended Ottoman empire. "Away with dreams and shadows; they have cost us dearly," he said...
...Kemal went on a speaking tour among his people: "Remain yourselves, but take from the West that which is indispensable to the life of a developed people. Let science and new ideas come in freely. If you don't, they will devour...
...took with discrimination. He wanted to democratize Turkey, for "no country is free unless it is democratic." But he recognized that "Democracy in Turkey now would be a caricature," and set his dictatorship to preparing his nation for democracy. Thirty years ago this month (on Oct. 29, 1923), Kemal became: President of the new republic, commander in chief of the army, president of the Council of Ministers, chief of the only party, and speaker of the Assembly. He began ridding the Turks of the things that reminded them of the degenerate past. First he ordered the Sultan expelled; 16 months...
Though he made haste, he had an intuitive awareness of his people's gait. The old Turkish alphabet had become an esoteric nightmare of cumbersome Arabic scrawls; its difficulty contributed to illiteracy at home and incomprehensibility abroad. Kemal talked first to U.S. Educator John Dewey, then sat down with linguistic experts and worked out a new, simple Latin, A-B-C alphabet of 29 letters. Where new concepts lacked ancient symbols, he simply used Western forms: automobile to otomobil; coffee to kahve; statistic to istatistik...