I understand you Tim. You're not wrong in fact. I'm afraid my english isn't very good to explain well what I want to. There may be different answers to this, but I am going to say what I think and know. We're proud of being Turk maybe we have a reason such as having a proudful history maybe sometimes it's more than enough. At school the complete Turkish history is taught, so that's a very long history, and Ottoman time is a period that's more than 600 years. When we're proud of being turk, it comes from the history and the turkish history isn't separated from Ottoman time. It's such a long time, there had been gold times, but also falling time of the empire.in the ends of 19th century and till 1920s, the Ottoman government was no more powerful and was no more working for the Anatolian people. Ottoman empire was far behind the age and civilisation. After WW1, the ottoman empire was going to diminish from history, so the Turks were going to lose their freedom, independence. The ottoman government and sultan were ready to be under the control of the big countries especially England. So, the Turks needed a leader to save them and to fight against the big powers that want to erase the Turks from Anatolia. So, it was Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk). With thousands of difficulties, with the leadership of M.Kemal Turkish people fighted against both the Ottoman government, sultan and the exterior powers (England, Greece, France etc.) and in the end they saved the Turkish nation and got our independence. Trkish Republic was founded. Later a lot of reforms were made. So, after 1923 it is a new page for the Turks. Otherwise, the Turks would have diminished. By Mustafa Kemal, being a nation got a meaning, and if we want to get far beyond the civilized, developped countries, we should follow M.Kemal's principles, we should be aware of our history, but the direction isn't backward, but it's always further. We should protect our independence, and shouldn't try to get back to the Ottoman Time, because it's in the past, and it was an empire, it's just left in the history books, but now we're a nation and an independent secular republic, so our inspiration is Atatürk's principles. "Ne mutlu Türküm diyene!!!! ehehehe ok ok I stop.
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