Mustafa Kemal free essay sample

Kemal was born in Salonika (now Greece, but then part of Turkish Macedonia), the son of a lower middle class Turkish customs official. Ali Riza (Efendi) died when Kemal was a child; his mother was Zubeyde (Hanim). Kemal became known as an extremely capable military officer by being the only undefeated Ottoman commander during World War I. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire; he led the Turkish national movement in the Turkish War of Independence. Having established a provisional government, he defeated the forces sent by the Allies. His successful military campaigns led to the liberation of the country and to the establishment of Turkey. During his presidency, Kemal embarked upon a program of political, economic, and cultural reforms. An admirer of the Age of Enlightenment, he sought to transform the former Ottoman Empire into a modern, democratic, and secular nation-state. The principles of Ataturks reforms, upon which modern Turkey was established Leaders from the beginning of time have put policies or laws into place that they felt were beneficial. We will write a custom essay sample on Mustafa Kemal or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Some leaders leave a legacy of dramatic change and others do not. Kemal was a leader known for change, and his reforms such as the changes to education, more rights for women and the modernization of the economy were ground breaking and made him a hero too many. The National Assembly, which first convened on 23 April 1920, that was the first clue to the Turkish Republic. The successful management of the War of Independence by this assembly accelerated the founding of the new Turkish State. On the 1 of November 1922, the offices of the Sultan and caliph were severed from one other and the former was abolished. The second major change to education was reforming the language. The language of the Turks for many years was Arabic. According to Vesser the language was difficult and caused many people not to be able to read and write. â€Å" Determined to reduce illiteracy, Kemal asked Turkish Linguists to devise a new alphabet using European letters. In the summer of 1928, the president himself unveiled the surious new alphabet in an open-air seminar in downtown Istanbul. The new letters, he said would rescue our tongue from characters which starved our thoughts. [2] The new language was taught to everyone and in schools and more people were reading and writing than ever before. This was ground breaking because; Kemal was able to change the language of his people of more then 1,000 years. Women gained a lot more rights and independence while Kemal was in power. His motto was â€Å" Let’s be courageous in the matter of women. Let’s forget fear. †[3] This way of thinking chan ged women’s lives in the Turkish culture. Ottoman practice discouraged social interaction between men and women in keeping with Islamic practice. Mustafa Kemal began developing social reforms very early. He and his staff discussed issues like abolishing the veiling of woman and the integration of women into the outside world. Kemal needed a new civil code to establish his major step of giving freedom to women. The first part was the education of girls and was established with the unification of education. On 4 October 1926, the new Turkish civil code passed. It was modeled after the Swiss civil code. Under the new code, women gained equality with men in such matters as inheritance and divorce. Kemal did not consider gender a factor in social organization. According to his view, society marched towards its goal with men and women united. He believed that it was scientifically impossible for him to achieve progress and to become civilized if the gender separation continued as in Ottoman times Girls were allowed to go to school and encouraged to go into the work force, some women got into politics. Women’s place changed culturally, not just in the work place or school. Many of the republics early reforms affected women and Western newspapers celebrated the new women of Turkey who competed in beauty contests, smoked in public and danced to American jazz. [4] Some cultures around the world by this time were allowing women to start to expand their rights and Kemal wanted his country to modernize like the West. Kemal had a lot of support for his reform on women’s rights. Vesser does point out that if the women are happy, working and apart of politics then it is more support for Kemal and his policies for government. The economy was an area that was reformed in different ways. Kemal reformed the railroad system to get the economy going. This allowed for the country to export their goods and benefit from the import of other goods. As Vessel explains, Stalin had introduced a 5-year plan and Kemal modeled a plan after Stalin’s. â€Å" Turkey’s first five year plan drew on existing strengths in agriculture to create processing plants for sugar, tobacco and cotton†¦the government funded the building of iron and steel works and chemical plants. †[5] Although this idea was based on Stalin’s idea it was expanded upon and it was ground breaking when it was brought into Turkey because it brought the economy in a direction it had never been in before. Focusing and expanding on what Turkey already had to offer allowed for greater involvement in trade throughout the world. With the overhaul of the education system, rights for women and the economy in good standings, the country was headed towards the modernity that Kemal was after. The documentary that was seen in class depicted Kemal as a hero and this has been true for many years. He was a hero to many people. He brought groundbreaking ideas into education, changed the lives of women and jump-started the economy to benefit his people and their country. He built a new government after the fall of the ottomans and his policies changed how the Turkish people did things. Although sometimes criticized for his methods, Kemal is recognized internationally as a great political leader and thinker who transformed an important part of the 20th-century world. He is revered in Turkey as the nations Founding Father and an inspiration to contemporary Turkish leaders. Although his nation is still developing to achieve fully the goals of his 1930s reforms, it has advanced impressively. As he states in the idea of the republic â€Å" In these circumstances, one resolution alone was possible, namely, to create a New Turkish state. †[6] This is what fueled Kemal’s policies.