Word: rk
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...friend's 6-year-old recently started primary school in Istanbul. By the second week, his favorite superhero, Spider-Man, had been supplanted by a flesh-and-blood mortal who died 70 years ago: Mustafa Kemal, better known as Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. The boy's shift of allegiance is a universal rite of passage in Turkey, where children are raised on a diet of passionate poems, military derring-do and sanitized history that elevate the national hero into a demigod. (See pictures of cultures co-existing in Istanbul...
...blue-eyed leader retains that grip on Turks' imagination well beyond their school days. His portrait graces every office, classroom, boat, bus and building in the country. The sleepiest of Anatolian towns features an Atatürk statue in its square. On Tuesday morning at 9:05 a.m., as sirens wailed, the entire nation came to a halt to mark the minute of his death...
...fast-changing Turkey, Atatürk's personality cult is slowly cracking, and the ructions are reverberating through the nation's political life. A new film about the legendary officer, who fought off occupying European powers to create modern Turkey from the remnants of a moribund Ottoman Empire, has stirred controversy by depicting Mustafa Kemal the man, not the icon. He is shown as a lonely figure, a heavy drinker and a failed husband, racked by doubts at the end of his life. The documentary uses original footage as well as re-enactments and is tellingly called Mustafa instead...
...Recognition that Atatürk was all too human is hardly taboo-breaking, but the film has the secularist establishment, which sees itself as the guardian of Atatürk's legacy, up in arms. Critics have accused director Can Dundar, a popular and well-respected journalist, of lying, insulting Turkishness and even being part of an Islamist plot to weaken the staunchly secularist military...
...both celebrating and condemning the nihilistic flag flown by Reykjavík's listless postyouths, Kormákur managed to capture the city's brand of self-deprecating cool before it joined Björk as a cultural export. Today, you won't find too many Icelanders moaning so publicly about their dark, isolated lot in life. But you will find the spots where Hlynur and his friends live out their days of beer, cigarettes and one-night stands. Chief among them is Kaffibarinn, the pub at the fulcrum of the movie's social world, which still challenges its guests...