ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's quest for modernism in a historical persective, approaching the subject not from an abstract theoretical angle, but from the standpoint of a member of the Ottoman army officer corps at the beginning of the twentieth century. It begins by inquiring into the practical origins of Ataturk's political thinking and summarizes his overall view of modernization. Ataturk's economic thoughts clearly paralled his political ideas, which stressed retrenchment towards a limited but homogeneous and nationalistically based state within the frontiers of Anatolia. By early 1920 Ataturk had openly declared that his aim and that of the new nationalist movement in Anatolia was the creation of a new Turkish state in those regions where Muslim Ottomans were in the majority. Atatürk occasionally had to resort to forcible methods and rule the country in an authoritarian way has convinced some western observers and contemporary Turkish political scientists that he was an autocrat who supported dictatorship for Turkey.
