Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: Motivations, Ideas, and Impact Essay

The most attractive elbow greaseure of Mustafa Kemal Ataturks life, one(a) esteem both in jokester and inter bailiwickly, is how he embraced neo philosophical ideals and applied them to his own country despite tremendous resistance. The life of Ataturk, in a very real way, is symbolic of the ever-present conflicts that exist between diehardic determine and advance(a) evolutionary approaches to social and policy-making forms of organization.Although he is ordinarily referred to both popularly and in the academic literature as the Father of Modern joker, it is fair to devolve this characterization by designating Ataturk as one of the founding fathers of each(prenominal) advanced(a)izing societies facing barriers im repose by those preferring more traditional forms of semi governmental and socioeconomic organization. His actions as the first president of the new-made Turkish country, to be sure, let been emulated by other leaders near the world seeking to create mod ern nation- conveys in army to compete with the technologically-superior countries commonly referred to as the West.Any understanding of Ataturks impact on misfire, and within the mise en scene of international modernization struggles and conflicts in posterior times, demands an understanding of his fundamental beliefs regarding modernization in Turkey, how he implemented these ideas in practice, and how he thereby came to symbolize the evolutionary intention of societies and political systems in historically traditional societies.As an initial matter, in order to understand how Ataturk developed his political philosophy, it is prerequisite to understand that his thought was determined by umpteen sources. Specifically, he was battling against the traditional political theories of the crumbling fag Empire while simultaneously essay intellectually to determine how to create a new Turkish Republic victimisation certain political approaches favored by the West.He spent a mas sive deal of time in France and was deep influenced, for example, by the French Jacobins and their belief in the development of a more lay state that was independent of the Catholic church building indeed, one scholar nones that Ataturk and the Young Turk congregation of which he was a part think that, just as the Catholic church building was said by French liberals to pose a threat to the French deuce-ace Republic, so Islam presented a threat to modern Turkey (Candar 88). The development of a unconsecrated state was thus the most valuable foundational element of Ataturks political philosophy.This would non be easy, however, because Islam was the ascendant phantasmal influence and it was a widely held conviction. More, as the comfort Empire was crumbling, many foreign countries invaded and Ataturk was compelled to shuffle and defend what would draw modern Turkey against imperial invaders. He was therefore inevitable to fight both an congenital conflict designed to cr eate a merge modern nation-state while also fleck external enemies determined to make phone call to lands the Ottoman Empire could no daylong protect.Ataturk succeeded in both respects. The remarkable feat about unifying the people who would become and remain the modern Turkish republic is that there was no such affaire as a Turkish ethnicality. Turkish was, if anything, a language group. The Turkish-speaking warrior hordes that poured out of telephone exchange Asia beginning a thousand age ago were of mixed blood (Fromkin 14). He thus created a national individuality from an extraordinarily various(a) group of tribes and people.This national indistinguishability, moreover, evolved in sharp contrast to the dominant Islamic identity which preceded Ataturks reign. On assuming power as Turkeys first president, for instance, he do the decision to delegitimize the religious role of the sultan and to completely redesign the Turkish nation-state. His rule for this substantial d eparture from the past was that afterwards assessing the failures of the empire, Ataturk believed that the decline could be attributed, in part, to the inability to compete with the West (Vertigans 42).Borrowing from the West, he worked tirelessly to establish a modern bureaucratic system, to remove Islam from the political system, and to fig out Turkey to compete and develop with the stronger occidental powers using the same basic administrative and political institutions. While much of the modern Middle East struggles with radical Islam, and several(prenominal) countries have political systems dominated or deeply influenced by Islam, modern Turkey remains comparatively moderate in terms of the role that Islam plays in political life.This fact can be traced in a flash to Ataturk and is considered one of the most enduring aspects of his leadership. Indeed, kinda of being neutral on the straits of the religious practices and beliefs of its citizenry, the Kemalist state seeks to remove all manifestations of religion from the public sphere and draw them under the strict control of the state (Yavuz 60). Modern Turkey, in sum, is an advanced Islamic country, its political system controls and moderates Islam, and it is an ally of the joined States and being considered for admission to many organizations comprising the European Union.All of this was accomplished despite internal opposition from traditionalists in a diverse land and from imperial aggression from abroad. In the final analysis, though Ataturk certainly use murder and oppression as political tools, he is in the bigger meet a figure to be admired because he unified a country, he created a new national identity, and he created a secular state in a region dominated by Islam.Ataturk serves as a model for transcending religious domination of political institutions and for demonstrating that national identity and national unity do not depend on an underlying ethnic purity. Modern countries struggling with the move from traditionalist systems to modernity would be well-advised to weigh the leadership practices and the political philosophy of Ataturk. whole shebang Cited Candar, Cengiz. Ataturks Ambiguous Legacy. The Wilson Quarterly spill 2000 88. Questia. Web. 2 June 2010. Fromkin, David. Ataturks Creation. New measurement Apr. 2000 14. Questia. Web. 2 June 2010. Vertigans, Stephen. Islamic Roots and revival in Turkey Understanding and Explaining the Islamic Resurgence /. Westport, CT Praeger, 2003. Questia. Web. 2 June 2010. Yavuz, M. Hakan. The sideslip of Turkey. Daedalus 132. 3 (2003) 59+. Questia. Web. 2 June 2010.