ABSTRACT
Any traveller in Turkey is struck by the fact that the founder and first President of the Republic, who has now been dead for over seventy years, is still ubiquitous. A traveller arriving in Istanbul by air will touch down at Atatürk Airport. On the way to the city, one is likely to pass the Atatürk Olympic Stadium (which was built for the Olympic Games in Istanbul that never took place). Once in the centre, one drives along Atatürk Boulevard down to the Atatürk Bridge on the way to the modern business districts to the north. If one crosses into Asia, the chances are one will pass yet another Atatürk Bridge, the older of the two suspension bridges across the Bosphorus. Atatürk is literally everywhere. His portrait is displayed in government offices, in shops and restaurants. Every single school has an Atatürk bust in the schoolyard and an Atatürk corner in every classroom. Pronouncements by the leader – ‘The future is in the sky’, ‘A country without trees cannot be a Fatherland’, ‘The only true guide in life is science’ – are affixed to the front of official buildings, often with a stylised signature of Atatürk underneath. On special days, state television shows his picture in a corner of the screen. Since the 1990s, the use of the Atatürk image has diversified into buttons, bumper stickers, T-shirts and even shoes.
