Ataturk Quotes

Everything we see in the world is the creative work of women.

Science is the most reliable guide in life.

The biggest battle is the war against ignorance.

Eğitim, kültür ve bilgi aydınlığa açılan en geniş penceredir.

If we hadn't had Atatürk, we would have been an Afghanistan, an Iraq!

Why after my years of education, after studying the secular civilization and the socialization process, should i decent to the level of common people, i will make them rise to my level, let me not resemble them, they should resemble me!

I'm quickly approaching the moment of discovery: of myself by myself, which was something I knew all along and yet didn't know; and the discovery by poor half-blind Dr. Philobosian of what he'd failed to notice at my birth and continued to miss during every annual physical thereafter; and the discovery by my parents of what kind of child they'd given birth to (answer: the same child, only different); and finally, the discovery of the mutated gene that had lain buried in our bloodline for two hundred and fifty years, biding its time, waiting for Ataturk to attack, for Hajienestis to turn into glass, for a clarinet to play seductively out a back window, until, comint together with its recessive twin, it started the chain of events that led to me, here, writing in Berlin.

The greatest hero for a country is the person who gave a progressive vision, a peaceful soul, a modern mind and an unshakable belief in science to his nation. And for the Turks, this honorable name is Atatürk, an immortal revolutionist!

Bir ülke için en büyük kahraman, milletine ilerici bir vizyon, barışçıl bir ruh, modern bir zihin ve bilime sarsılmaz bir inanç veren kişidir. Ve Türkler için bu şerefli isim Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’tür, ölümsüz bir devrimci!

A stranger visiting a new town would first face the question, Are you from Anatolia or Rumelia? Ottoman popular culture attributed sophisticated characteristics to the Rumelians, such as wisdom, charm, and gentlemanly behavior. Anatolians, by contrast, were stereotyped as courageous, honest, and straightforward.

…In the eyes of a desperate and desolate Germany, this was a nationalist dream come true, or rather something like hyper-nationalist pornography…

I've got to drink: my mind keeps on working hard and fast to the point of suffering. I have to slow it down and rest it at times.. when I don't drink, I can't sleep, and the distress stupefies me.

Sovereignty and kingship are never decided by academic debate. They are seized by force. The Ottoman dynasty appropriated by force the government of the Turks, and reigned over them for six centuries. Now the Turkish nation has effectively gained possession of its sovereignty… This is an accomplished fact… If those assembled here … see the matter in its natural light, we shall all agree. Otherwise, facts will still prevail, but some heads may roll.

Greatness consists,’ he said, ‘in deciding only what is necessary for the welfare of the country, and making straight for the goal. … In the belief that you are not great, but small and weak, and expecting no help to reach you from any quarter, you will in the end surmount all hindrances. And if any man, after that, calls you great, you will simply laugh in his face.

Hitler repeatedly did everything he could to avoid upsetting the Turks. On two occasions he forbade military operations in Turkish waters when chasing the enemy. After Crete was taken, he stressed that except for a Kraft-durch-Freude (Strength through Joy) facility, nothing else, especially not military installations, could be built there, in order not to upset the Turks. The New Turkey was repeatedly invited to take part in the New Order of Europe

Many Ottomans of this period viewed life as a perennial tug-of-war between modernity and tradition. In several important ways, Salonica tilted toward the former. The city sported bustling Western-style cafés serving Viennese beer; literary clubs hosting philosophical debates; theaters staging dramas, comedies, and operettas; numerous institutions of learning; and a sizable and vibrant European community. Altogether, Salonica had undergone a major transformation during the reform era and had begun to look like a Western European city. The Muslim community, and especially its progressive Dönme component, had established the most advanced schools in the empire. Young Mustafa, who had ample opportunity to contrast the old and the new, chose to embrace modernity wholeheartedly.

Sooner or later indignation against such oppression and its accompanying corruption was bound to flare up into revolt.

Kemal (who would later take the name Ataturk) went on to lead the Turkish National Movement in a war against Greece, winning back territory the Ottomans had forfeited. In 1923 Kemal would preside over the creation of the secular nation of Turkey. For that reason, secular Turks have long viewed the battle of Canakkale as marking the birth of their modern society.

Harbord and his mission arrived in Sivas on 20 September. They were told by Mustafa Kemal that Turkey realized that it needed the aid of an impartial foreign country. ‘After all our experience we are sure that America is the only country able to help us,’ Mustafa Kemal acknowledged in a statement on 15 October.

The new secular republic reflected Mustafa Kemal’s personal philosophy. In a book published in 1928, Grace Ellison quotes him as saying to her, presumably in 1926–7: I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow-men.31 Yet, like many rationalists, Mustafa Kemal was himself superstitious and sought omens in dreams.32 When he inspected the front in March 1922, during the War of Independence, he had portions of the Koran recited during evening gatherings with commanders.33 But now he was out of the wood.

The assembly expressed its Islamic feelings on 14 September when it passed a law prohibiting alcohol. This did not stop Mustafa Kemal from obtaining his regular supply of raki.

After visiting the Krupp factories, the Turkish party spent ten days in Berlin, where Vahdettin told a German journalist that women had begun to work in public in Turkey, and that although progress was slow, ‘we are making the effort to give equal rights to our women’.88 Mustafa Kemal was not alone in favouring women’s emancipation in the Ottoman state.

He also gives a good picture of the profound chaos unleashed in Muslim countries in 1924 by Ataturk’s sudden abolition of the caliphate, an institution they had superficially not taken much notice of but which was central to a Muslim’s whole identity.

Theodore Roosevelt survived an attempt on his life when the written speech in his pocket stopped the bullet. In 1915, a pocket watch saved Kamal Ataturk’s life.

Since 1744, the protection and propagation of Islam has remained the Al Saud dynasty’s motivating ideology. It contributed significantly to the success of King Abdulaziz’s nation-building program and was a strategic choice at odds with that of more secular nationalist Muslim leaders such as Mustapha Kemal Ataturk or the Shah of Iran.

Birçok asker şehit oldu, bizim türkiye için - Atatürk'ün türkiye için. Atatürk'ün türkiye yani? Atatürk'ün türkiye yani vicdan, merhamet, sabır ve baris - Atatürk'ün türkiye yani insanlık. Uyan kardeşlerim, yeni fikirleri kabul et - vicdan ol, cesur ol, ve hayvanlık karşı yürü.

I don't have any allegiance to any single flag, but still I cannot disrespect them either with words or with action, you know why, because a flag represents a people, therefore disrespecting a flag means disrespecting a people. Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a great leader in one of the countries of planet earth. The military of a neighboring country had taken over a region there, but accompanied by his brave soldiers the great leader liberated that part of his country from oppression. In celebration when the people of his country laid down the flag of the oppressor for their leader to walk on, he refused - he refused to insult even the flag of an invading country, for such is the character of a true leader. Leaders don't insult others to feel superior - they simply live as an epitome of courage, conscience and humility, and others can't help but follow on their own.

For centuries, the Ottoman Sultans had been recognized as Caliphs—for Sunnis the spiritual successors of the Prophet Mohammed. In 1924, the leader of post-Ottoman Turkey, Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, constitutionally abolished the Caliphate.

Chapter Twenty-Eight The Crash ADDISON HAD SAT ON couches that were longer than Dax’s plane. The four-seat Cessna Skyhawk was a cramped ride even when you didn’t have a 150-pound Great Dane named Mr. Jacobsen on your lap. The wings were mounted awkwardly on top of the plane, instead of sprouting from the sides. Addison wasn’t sure if the plane was designed for flying or drying laundry. All in all, the Skyhawk had all the stylish sophistication of a garbage disposal, except with less pickup. Still, after the harrowing taxi ride to Ataturk Airport, Addison thought Dax’s airplane felt downright safe by comparison. Istanbul was already a pinprick in the distance when the plane reached cruising altitude,

Erdogan was himself a radical Islamicist. He was busy transforming Turkey from Kemal Ataturk’s secular state into an Islamicist state.

Like King Faisal, but unlike Mustapha Kemal Ataturk in Turkey or Reza Shah Pahlavi in Iran, Mohammed bin Salman would also make an effort to preserve the dignity, influence, and incomes of the clerics.

What makes a man great is all the good things he left behind and as for Atatürk, thinking generations and questioning minds are the best things he left for Turkey!

Bir insanı büyük yapan şey, geride bıraktığı bütün iyi şeylerdir ve Atatürk’e gelince, düşünen kuşaklar ve sorgulayan zihinler onun Türkiye’ye bıraktığı en iyi şeylerdir!

Whatever it did to Churchill, Gallipoli saw the birth of a nation, or rather two. By no remote consequence of the campaign, Mustafa Kemal would become Kemal Ataturk, while the rump of the Ottoman Empire became a Turkish national state under his leadership. And Australia would change also. The headstone of one Australian infantryman bears the words, chosen by his parents, ‘When day break, duty done for King and Country,’ but that was not how later generations of Australians would feel. ‘From a place you’ve never heard of, comes a story you’ll never forget’ was the quaint slogan advertising the 1981 Australian movie Gallipoli, which helped launch Mel Gibson’s career, but every Australian has heard of it.

Under current secularist legislation, only a civil marriage is valid in law, and a religious wedding ceremony may be held only on production of a civil marriage certificate; otherwise, the parties and the officiating imam are guilty of an offence.

We don’t want any of that; said N’Dolo, jerking his head in their direction. 'We don’t want to go on being the world’s zoo, we want factories and tractors instead of lions and elephants. We must first get rid of colonialism, which delights in this exotic .stagnation, the principal advantage of which is that it produces cheap labor. We must get rid of that at all costs, and then, with the same energy and freedom from sentimentality, get down to indoctrinating the masses: crush out the tribal past, hammer the new political ideas, by every means, into brains darkened by primitive traditions.' A period of dictatorship was of course indispensable, for the masses were not ready to take control; Ataturk’s experiment in Turkey and Stalin’s in Russia were historically justified. Morel listened calmly; he had long ceased to have any illusions about what was in store for Africa.

Akçam citó incluso a Mustafá Kemal Ataturk, el fundador del Estado turco, quien el 23 de abril de 1920 denunció las «matanzas armenias» en tanto que «acto vergonzoso».

Mustafa'nın babası Ali Rıza Efendi, anası da Zübeyde Hanım'dı. Zübeyde Hanım, Bulgar sınırının ötesindeki Slavlar kadar sarışındı; düzgün, beyaz bir teni, derin ama berrak, açık mavi gözleri vardı. Ailesi Selanik'in batısında, Arnavutluk'a doğru, sert ve çıplak dağların geniş, donuk sulara gömüldüğü göller bölgesinden geliyordu. Burası, Türklerin Makedonya'yı ve Tesalya'yı almalarından sonra Anadolu'nun göbeğinden gelen köylülerin yerleştikleri yerdi. Bu yüzden Zübeyde Hanım, damarlarında ilk göçebe Türk kabilelerinin torunları olan ve hâlâ Toros Dağları’nda özgür yaşamlarını sürdüren sarışın Yörüklerin kanını taşıdığını düşünmekten hoşlanırdı. Mustafa da annesine çekmişti; saçları onun gibi sarı, gözleri onun gibi maviydi. Annesinin, üzerindeki etkisi büyük oldu. Mustafa bu etkiye zaman zaman saygıyla, zaman zaman da başkaldırarak karşılık verdi. Bir halk kadını olan ve bundan başka türlü görünmek de istemeyen Zübeyde Hanım güçlü bir iradeye ve sağlam bir köylü güzelliğine sahipti. Doğuştan akıllı bir kadındı, yalnız yeteri kadar eğitim görmemiş, okuma yazmayı ancak öğrenebilmişti.

You are either Ataturk's turk or Erdogan's turk, you cannot be both.

It was an era of expansion, but also of plunder. Bribery secured public contracts and the contractor then overcharged the state,

Mustafa Kemal was convinced, and ordered that the theory should be taught at the new university in Ankara. He told a young French financial expert, Hervé Alphand, that his name was Turkish as it comprised the words alp (champion) and han (or khan, a ruler). In confirmation, Mustafa Kemal felt Alphand’s skull: it was, he decided, brachycephalic, the characteristic skull-shape of the Turkish race.11

In short, none of the destructive fantasies that have taken possession of leaders in our own age, from Kemal Ataturk to Stalin, from the Khans of the Kremlin to the Kahns of the Pentagon, were foreign to the souls of the divinely appointed founders of the first machine civilization. With every increase of effective power, extravagantly sadistic and murderous impulses erupted out of the unconscious. This is the trauma that has distorted the subsequent development of all 'civilized' societies. And it is this fact that punctuates the entire history of mankind with outbursts of collective paranoia and tribal delusions of grandeur, mingled with malevolent suspicions, murderous hatreds, and atrociously inhumane acts.

Dünyanın bize saygı duymasını istiyorsak, önce bizim kendi benliğimize sarılmamız ve bu gerçeğe ulaştığımızı dünyaya göstermemiz lazımdır. Milli benliklerini bulamayan milletler başka milletlerin avıdır. (Hakimiyeti Milliye 26.3.1923)

Sen,Devlet olarak istenmeyeni –hem de düşmanına- vermeğe kalkarsan, sana ne demek gerekir? Üstelik ‘’börtü-böcek’’ soyundan gelen bir şeyler bağışlamıyorsun! Bağışladığın, uğruna sellerle kan döktüğün vatan toprağıdır.

Çünkü, bu topraklar için –daha dün denilebilecek geçmişte- dereler gibi Türk kanı akıtmıştık!

Tarih bağı kurmamız lazım… Folklor bağı kurmamız lazım… Dil bağı kurmamız lazım…

Ortak bir mazimiz var, bu maziyi bilincimize taşımamız lazım. Bu sebeple okullarda okuttuğumuz tarihi, Orta Asya’dan başlattık. Bizim çocuklarımız, orada yaşayanları bilmelidirler, orada yaşayanlar da bizi bilmeli.

Dört savaş yorgunu Türk’e, bir nefes almak çok mu görülüyordu?

Aslında ben onlardan daha fazla heyecanlı idim. Büyük bir sorumluluk yükleniyordum. Bu sorumluluğun içinde yalnız hayatım olsa bir şey değil ; fakat memleketin kaderi de tercih ettiğim savaş biçiminde yatıyordu. Yalnız ben yenilmeyeceğim ; ordum yenilmeyecek, memleketimin son ümidi elden çıkacaktı! Ama ne yapayım ki başka çarem yoktu.

Aramızda Milli Mücadelenin askerlik cephesini başaracak başka arkadaşlar da vardı. Ama savaştan sonra yeni bir Türkiye yaratacak tek kişi, Mustafa Kemal Paşa’dır. O olmasaydı, biz birbirimizi yerdik. Abbasi devleti gibi ‘’Tevaif-i mülük’’ halinde paramparça olurduk.

Gazi Paşa’nın zihninde iki harita taşıdığı anlaşılıyor: Biri: Anadoludaki Batı Türklerinin kurduğu Cumhuriyet! Biri : Bu Cumhuriyettin, kanını, kültürünü paylaşan Türkistan ve Kafkas Türklerinin yaşadıkları toprakların haritası.

Atatürk bütün Asya kıtasının gururu idi! Dünyanın en eski, en bilinen kıtasına, cihanın yönünü değiştirecek çağda insanların artık yetişmeyeceği kanaatinin yaygınlaştığı günümüzde O, büyük bir milletin bağrından çıktı ve bu nazariyeyi iflas ettirdi. O, bütün Asya kıtasının ATA’sıdır.'' (Tcang Yang Ye Pan/ Çin Gazatesi)

The struggle within Turkey that continues to this day is the legacy of Kemal Ataturk’s radical reformation,

vision, of the Ittihadists and, by extension, Kemal Ataturk, did not include the non-Muslim population of what was once the Ottoman Empire.

impact of this makeover has been to significantly impede historical research, and it is one of Ataturk’s most devastating accomplishments.

Eksiklerini, sehir merkezinde bulunan, Ataturk Bulvari'ndaki Alman Kultur Merkezi'nde tamamlamaya calisiyordu. Merkez, oldukca zengin bir kutuphaneye sahipti: Uzuncalarlar, notalar, muzik kitaplari vardi burada.

Simdi su sahneyi gozumuzde canlandiralim: Mevsimlerden ilkbahari yasiyor Ankara. Fazil Say son kez Cankaya tepelerinden yavas yavas iniyor ve kuzeye, Ulus Meydani'na, Ata'sinin heybetli bir sekilde at ustunde oturdugu anita yoneliyor. Oradan Yenisehir otobusune binip Kizilay'a geliyor. Kizilay Meydani'nda Alman mimar Clemens Holzmeister'in planlarina gore Avusturyali heykeltiraslardan Anton Hanak ve Josef Thorak'in diktigi anita bakmak icin kisa bir mola veriyor. Anit, askerin halka nasil yardima kostugunu canlandirir. Anita biraz daha yaklastiginizda taslara kazinmis Ataturk'un su sozlerini okursunuz: "Turk, ogun, calis, guven.

Even the most modern and westernized leaders, ranging from Harvard-educated Benazir Bhutto to self-professed Ataturk fan Pervez Musharraf, have failed to stop Pakistan from descending farther into an Islamist quagmire.

The Kemal-ist way to “make politics”— to wage war against the Entente for an honorable peace— was viewed as “active politics” par excellence. The opposite was what the papers diagnosed in the case of Germany: ful-fi llment politics, which in their eyes was either “passive politics” or not even politics at all. The Kladderadatsch cartoon “How to Revise a Peace Treaty” summarized this debate and Turkey’s role- model function perfectly. It ruled out historians, diplomats, and politi-cians as agents of revision. The one who achieves revision is a Turk, “saber in hand”—“action” instead of “talk.

lost incredible amounts of blood. Then the state literally breaks down because of hunger and the lack of everything. A collapse just as monumental as the German one, just translated into Turkish. Five years later it [the collapse] led to the Treaty of Sèvres [here he confused the Treaty of Sèvres with the Treaty of Lausanne], with the result that the Turkish Empire is founded again and that the world speaks with highest respect of this Turkish state. The inner strength had remained, it was instantly mobilized as soon as the man [Atatürk] came who managed to remind his people of its great tradition and who led them forward. That is what was different with us Germans

certain convictions are hard to explain in terms of logic and reason. Such are the convictions which arise from what we feel in the blood and the fiery moments of battle.