“According to its constitution, Turkey is a secular state with no official religion. The truth is that Turks profess and must profess, a highly developed faith enveloping and defining every aspect of their lives. It is the cult of Atatürk, founder of the Turkish Republic and now a virtual deity. “----------

“The Atatürk faith, known as Kemalism, has its buildings, dozens of houses and rooms around the country where the Great Man slept, spoke or ate. Without Atatürk’s vision, without his ambition and energy, without his astonishing boldness in sweeping away traditions accumulated over centuries, today’s

Turkey would not exist and the world would be much poorer.”---------

“Fascism, national socialism, and bolshevism have been swept away by history, leaving a heritage of immeasurable suffering and pain, however Kemalism remains triumphant, modern Turkey its crowning glory. Trying to understand Turkey without understanding Atatürk would be like studying European history without considering Christianity. -----------------

“For everything in the world, for civilization, for life, for success---the truest

guide is knowledge and science,” Atatürk declared in one famous speech.-----------“The man around whom this passionate faith was built remains largely unknown outside his homeland. [“…Perhaps it is simply because Turkey has remained for so long on the fringes of the world’s consciousness….”] He deserves to be recognized and celebrated as one of the twentieth century’s most successful revolutionaries.” ---------------

“While still a young officer, Kemal became a clandestine operative for a subversive group founded in the 1890’s and known as the “Committee of Union and Progress” ; the world called its members Young Turks.” ---------------

“To the astonishment of Europe and the world, in 1915 a Turkish force managed to resist and then repel British-led invaders whose battle plan had been drawn up by no less a personage that First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill.”-----------

“In some places I have seen women who put a piece of cloth or a towel or the like over their heads to hide their faces, and who turn their backs or huddle themselves on the ground when a man passes by,” Kemal said in one speech. “What are the meaning and sense of this behavior? Gentlemen, can the

mothers and daughters of a civilized nation adopt this strange manner, this barbarous posture? It is a spectacle that makes the nation an object of ridicule. It must be remedied at once.” -------------------

“We must free ourselves from these incomprehensible signs which for centuries have held our minds in an iron vice, “ Kemal told them [Note: ‘Them’ = Turkey’s leading figures at a gathering] “Our nation will show, with its script and with its mind, that its place is with the civilized world.”-------------------------

“Kemal took fewer years to wipe away the defining traditions of Turkish life

than centuries had been spent building them” [“..including a ban on the

broadcast of Oriental music and a decree that ezan, the Muslin call to prayer, must be chanted in Turkish rather than Arabic.”----------------------------------------

“After the war was won, however, Kemal did not hesitate to crush former allies who opposed his radical program.” ------------

“Kemal decreed that each citizen must have a last name. The head of every family was ordered to choose one. Today there are names like Berberoğlu (barber´s son), karamehmetoğlu (Black Mehmet´s son), and even

Yarımbıyıkoğlu (son of the man with the high-mustache). Others took martial names like Eraslan (bravelion) or Demirel (iron hand). For those who had trouble choosing, books of names were sent to every town hall. Many people selected lyrical ones like Sarıgül (yellow rose) or Akyıldız (pale star).

Only one name was forbidden: Atatürk (Father of Turks). That was the name Kemal chose for himself. ----------------

“Judges, prosecutors, provincial bureaucrats, military commanders, school principals and others who consider themselves apart of the Kemalist vanguard often display five or ten or more, not just photographs but also paintings, etchings, busts, engraved paperweights, ceramic plates and whatever else they can find.” -----------

“By the end of the 1920’s, statues depicting him(Atatürk )on horseback or in

other martial poses had assumed commanding positions in Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir, Konya and Samsun.”------------------

“Atatürk’s scorched earth campaign against religious power set the stage for

this conflict. He had bitter memories of his years at a Muslim primary school, where pupils were made to memorize long passages from the Koran and robed imams cudgeled those who faltered.” (Note: AKA Atatürk’ being non-demonational ) -----------------

“When a British correspondent asked him (Atatürk) about his own beliefs, he replied: “I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of

the sea”. (Note: Religions being the main cause of wars and murders, which will not develop a country or promote its unity.) -------------------

“When we punish soldiers for mistreating civilians, we never publicize it.” -----------

“When something goes wrong you can try to fix it, but you can’t ever let outsiders know there was anything wrong.” -------------

“Some Turks are less than comfortable with their land’s pre-Islamic history.

They worry that if they celebrate their Arabian, Kurdish, Greek, Armenian and Georgian pasts, Turkey will seem less theirs. Taught from childhood that they

are descended from Turkic tribes that followed the legendary gray wolf, out of Central Asia in the tenth century, many of them have an insular Turkocentric

view of the world, reinforced by the government’s having changed hundreds of place-names to make them sound more Turkish.” --------------

“In no other country does so much liberty coexist with such sustained violation

of elemental human rights. Of all the countries with bad human rights records, Turkey is the freest. To put it the other way, Turkey has the worst human-rights record of any free country. This is its deepest and most troubling contradiction. Turkey’s failure to keep pace with new and evolving global human-rights standards is the single greatest reason for its failure to integrate itself fully

into the community of civilized nations.”

“Turkey’s constitution stipulates in its preamble: “ No protection shall be given

to thoughts or opinions that run counter to Turkish national interests, the fundamental principle of the existence and indivisibility of the Turkish state and territory, the historical and moral values of Turkishness, or the nationalism, principles, reforms and modernism of Atatürk.”

-A handful of repressive laws have been written in the spirit of that preamble. They forbid the publication of “articles inciting people to break the law”;

“ articles that make people unwilling to serve in the military”; and articles or statements that “publicly insult or ridicule the moral personality of Turkishness,

the Republic, the Parliament, the Government, ministers of state, the military

or security forces or the judiciary.” Also forbidden are radio or television broadcasts that undermine “the national and spiritual values of society”,

political party platforms suggesting “that minorities exist in the Turkish

Republic based on national, religious, confessional, racial or language differences”: and, of course, anything that “insults or curses the memory of Atatürk.” -----------------------------------

“Army commanders”---(they)..“consider themselves Atatürk’s heirs and justify everything they do by claiming to be the only ones who truly understand what

he wanted for his country.” ------------

“They consider themselves purer than most civilians, less tainted by greed and dishonesty, (and) more willing to make sacrifices for the good of the nation.”---------“…day after day and year after year cadets naturally become officers who revere abstract ideals like “state” and “duty” more than humanistic values like individual rights and the supremacy of civilian power.” --------------

“Turkish officers begin their military career with a solemn oath: “I will remain loyal to Atatürk’s principles and reforms and I will defend them,” never have

they been more urgently called upon to live by that oath. To do so they, like

the rest of the encrusted Kemalist establishment, must trust the wisdom of the Turkish nation. If they want their people to believe in them, they must believe

in their people.” -------

“As long as there have been Turks, that have been known for their

horsemanship and watching men on horseback is still one of the Turks great pleasures. There are of course country clubs where the privileged practice the stylized delicacy of dressage and the tightly controlled ritual of show jumping.”-----

“(However)…in the Turkish heartland, especially on the plains of wild provinces like Erzincan and Bayburt, once home to ancient cultures and still places where tradition is strong, it is the wild sport of cirit that captivates and thrills. Cirit matches are lightning-fast, played by riders who gallop toward each other in clouds of dust, hurling wooden javelins. They win points by striking an opponent or forcing his horse to veer off course.”----------------

“People are thought to have begun riding horses more than four thousand years ago in Central Asia, and the first to do so were probably ancestors of today’s Turks.”