Jim’s Reviews > Ataturk: A Biography of Mustafa Kemal, Father of Modern Turkey > Status Update

His was a dictatorship based on democratic forms, within a legal and constitutional framework which he scrupulously observed. For he was building, as his fellow dictators were not, for his own disappearance, trying to lay down a system of government which could survive his time.

Here [the Peace Conference at Lausanne] was a conflict of psychology. The Allies saw the Turks as a vanquished people; the Turks saw themselves as victors. Turkey was the first of the defeated Central Powers to be in a position to negotiate peace. But she was to negotiate at a disadvantage. For the Allies aspired to impose a treaty on her.

It was related of [Grand Vizier Damad Ferid] that, in cabinet making, he called a bunch of elderly pashas out of retirement, stood them in a row, and appointed them according to the personal appearance of each -- the erect and martial pasha as Minister of War, the lean and intellectual as Minister of Justice, the bearded and devout looking as Minister of Pious Foundations, the stout & plebeian as Minister of Commerce

Kemal was no lofty idealist. He had few moral principles, only a dtermination to attain his ends. By cynic though he was, these ends were nonetheless the country's. His was no negative cynicism but that of the realist who seeks practicable solutions.... Turkey under his aegis must not merely be saved from the foreigner; she must be rebuilt on an enduring foundation.

But beneath his outward tension, there was an inward confidence. Responsibility acted upon him like a tonic. No longer did he have to sit by and watch, in a growing frenzy of frustration, the errors and muddles of those whom he saw as his inferiors.