Atatürk an Intellectual Biography

In M. Sukru Hanioglu, Atatürk An Intellectual Biography wrote by the Princeton University Press in 2011 showed various ideas about Ama Hangi Atatürk and what he created. His goal was to preserve the remnants of the Ottoman Empire and transform it into the Republic of Turkey. From his education in nonreligious schools to the modernization of all the young Turks and their movements saw development in the Republic. As a military officer in World War I, he went on to lead the Turkish War of Independence, abolishing the Ottoman Empire. He became the only leader in history to successfully turn a Muslim nation into a Western democracy state during his time of presidency. Atatürk was so successful that in October of 1923 the Grand National Assembly met in turkey and signed the treaty of Lausanne which proclaimed the Republic of Turkey.

With the modernization of the new Republic of Turkey, Atatürk led many reforms, political movements, and theories to help build his new nation. For example, Atatürk's political reforms involved a number of changes that would end of these traditions in turkey and so Atatürk planned a program of political change that later developed over the years on. “According to many intellectuals, Turkey, unklike the divided societies of the west, was a classless society. The intellectuals were under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal to drive the state-sponsored engine to revolutionary change. Also, during the same period the people’s houses of Turkey attempted to create and merge to a kemalist ideology.” (Hanioglu) Furthermore, the Ottoman Dynasty in November 1922, and the Caliphate dynasty in March 1924 both led to the creation of the law of fundamental organization. The Turkish Grand National Assembly was created by a signing of a treaty, and adopted the Constitution of 1924 into their new system. “Sovereignty belongs without restriction to the nation, and the method of administration depends on the people’s direct administration of its own destiny.” (Hanioglu, Ataturk) Honestly, the Kemalist reforms brought the most effective social change to the ottoman empire in education, establishing a public education system, and reforming women's suffrage. From 1926-1934 was a period where women in the Republic won many rights, including the rights to vote. The educational reforms on the other hand combined with the national assembly and Atatürk both encouraged people to take many trips to the countryside teaching the new alphabet. In November, 1928, the new Turkey alphabet was introduced replacing the previously used Perso-Arabic script. The adoption of the Latin alphabet and the deletion of foreign loanwords was part of Mustafa Kemal's program of modernization. Equally important, Economic reforms were against many state-owned factories throughout the country, such as the agriculture, machine making and textile industries. (Hanioglu, Ataturk) Many of these businesses grew into successful enterprises